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‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Bisexual Representation

But the clearest example of the Buffyverse’s discomfort with bisexuality, in my opinion, appears in the character of Faith Lehane. … Despite what was at the time a groundbreaking portrayal of a loving lesbian relationship, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ still had many issues in its messaging surrounding queer sexualities, in particular bisexuality. In my opinion, a few material changes could have gone a long way in removing at least some of this negative messaging.

This guest post written by Lisa Ward appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired, it was considered to be a groundbreaking, feminist television show. Its nuanced portrayals of girls and women stood out in a genre where girls and women were generally portrayed as one-dimensional victims, not three-dimensional heroes (and villains). And for a generation of young people (myself included), this representation was vital and growing up with Buffy had a lasting positive impact on their lives.

However, from the perspective of intersectional feminist criticism, the series was far from unproblematic: its portrayals of people of color and in particular, women of color, were sparse, generally poorly handled, and all too often ended in untimely death; many of the underlying attitudes the show reinforced with regards to sexuality, in particular female sexuality, were deeply troubling; mental illness was portrayed in a very stigmatizing way (despite, in my opinion, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)’s Season 6 arc with depression being handled fairly well); and the show sends a very mixed message regarding its gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters.

It is this final topic — bisexuality and bisexual characters — that I want to explore. While bisexuality is also inclusive of people outside of the gender binary, I will be primarily using the term bisexual, rather than related terms, such as pansexual, as the Buffyverse does not seem to recognize the existence of more than two genders (except perhaps in its non-humanoid characters).

Willow Rosenberg

A piece on bisexuality in the Buffyverse cannot be written without discussing Willow Rosenberg.

There is a lot of debate from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans on whether Willow (Alyson Hannigan)’s character counts as a triumphant case of lesbian representation (at least until Tara’s murder which fulfills the classic Bury Your Gays trope and facilitates Willow’s, admittedly temporary, jump into the Psycho Lesbian trope), a sad case of bisexual erasure, or a nuanced example of sexual fluidity. I can see merits in all of these arguments.

Willow was deeply attracted to and formed physical relationships with men before meeting Tara (Amber Benson) and coming out as a lesbian. Even after coming out, Willow goes on to make comments that imply an ongoing attraction to men as well as women — for example, she describes both Dracula (Rudolf Martin) and Giles (Anthony Head) as “sexy” during Season 4. And Willow’s vampire self, as seen in “Doppelgangland” is quite clearly openly bisexual, making sexual overtures towards both men and women (and her own alternate universe self, because she is a Depraved Bisexual trope – a trope Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a very damaging relationship with indeed). It is these plot points that tend to lead to accusations of bisexual erasure for the character of Willow Rosenberg.

However, as is rightly pointed out by those who disagree, there are several in-universe of Watsonian explanations available for these plot points. For example, sexual identity is about more than just sexual attraction. It is known that many people who identify as straight have had same-sex fantasies or experiences, and for some, do not see these fantasies or experiences as changing their fundamental heterosexual identity. The same can apply for those who identify as gay or lesbian. Being queer is strongly correlated with behavior and attraction (as well as self-identification), but not strictly defined by these things. This explanation allows us to interpret Willow as a nuanced portrayal of a lesbian woman, not an erased bisexual woman.

Another in-universe explanation for Willow’s characterization is that sexuality is fluid and sexual identity can change over time. It’s not unusual for someone to identify as straight throughout their teen years and come to realize that they are queer later in life. Willow Rosenberg could be a nuanced example of this true to life scenario. Not everyone realizes their sexuality as a teen or even a young adult, and sexual fluidity is a perfectly acceptable explanation for her character.

Personally, I like both of these in-universe explanations. Sexual identity is complex and nuanced; if we explore Willow’s character from a real-world perspective, then it’s perfectly acceptable to say that she provides a realistic representation of a complex lesbian woman who at one point in her life identified as straight.

However, when we explore the character of Willow through an out-of-universe or Doylist lens, looking at the Buffyverse as a whole and how the writers choose to represent bisexuality in other characters, the accusations of bi erasure in the case of Willow gain a lot of validity.

Bisexuality and Evil in the Buffyverse

From the outset, bisexuality is regularly associated with evil in the Buffyverse.

Often one of the key signifiers that a human has been turned into a vampire is sudden hypersexual — and frequently bisexual — behavior. This is particularly true for female vampires, who quite often fit the Depraved Bisexual archetype.

Some key examples include, of course, vampire Willow — who aggressively flirts with human Willow, including groping and licking, while maintaining her hypersexual relationship with vamp Xander (Nicholas Brendon) — and Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters)’s lovers Darla (Julie Benz) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) — who, in a flashback scene, are shown in their underwear discussing a shared sexual encounter followed by bathing together and implied oral sex.

For male vampires, this is less explicit — most likely due to taboos concerning sexual behavior between two men on-screen versus sexual behavior between two women. On-screen, male characters’ sexuality tends to become more overtly predatory towards women in order to signal their change from good (human) to evil (vamp), but nonetheless we also get allusions to off-screen bisexual behavior. For example, Spike confirms he and Angel have slept together saying, “Angelus and I were never intimate, unless you count that one time…” Angel expresses a mutual interest claiming, “I love the ladies, but lately I’ve been wondering what it would be like, to share the slaughter of innocents with another man. You don’t think that makes me some kind of a deviant do you?”

Other evil characters are often portrayed as both bisexual and/or hypersexual as shorthand for evil, bad, or wrong throughout the series. Some examples include: Glory (Clare Kramer) licking Tara’s hand before mind-raping her and flirting with Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) before bleeding her; Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs)’s sexually charged dialogue with Giles (a relationship which writer/producer Jane Espenson confirmed did take place in their younger, “dark magic” days); Andrew (Tom Lenk)’s ambiguous attractions expressed towards men such as Warren (Adam Busch), Jonathan, and Spike, and women such as Buffy, Anya (Emma Caulfield), and a woman at a bar; and Forrest (Leonard Roberts)’s angry, possessive behavior towards Riley (Mark Blucas) and unreasonable jealousy of Buffy, even though he finds her “so hot.”

But the clearest example of the Buffyverse’s discomfort with bisexuality, in my opinion, appears in the character of Faith Lehane.

Faith Lehane

Despite never actually being referred to as bisexual or sharing any openly sexual moments with any women on-screen, many Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans consider Faith (Eliza Dushku) to be a bisexual woman who falls in unrequited love with Buffy. Personally, I think there is subtext in the television series that supports this view (and writer/producer Jane Espenson, writer/producer Doug Petrie, creator Joss Whedon, and actor Eliza Dushku all agree); this qualifies as both queerbaiting and bisexual erasure, all while playing into the Depraved Bisexual and Psycho Lesbian tropes.

Faith is, in the words of Andrew, “the dark slayer” and is supposed to represent a counterpart to Buffy’s lighter, more conservative nature. This means that, unlike Buffy, she is overtly sexual and open about her desires — and later, after her switch to the dark side, she becomes unacceptably sexually predatory.

When she first appears, it seems like Faith’s approach to sexuality might be positive – in fact, Faith’s pronouncement that slaying always makes her hungry and horny results in the other characters covertly shaming Buffy for being so repressed when she claims in return that sometimes slaying makes her “crave a non-fat yogurt afterwards.” However, as the series progresses, it’s made clear that Faith is a bad influence, and by the time she joins the forces of evil, Faith is slut-shamed by the main characters on a regular basis.

When Faith and Buffy first meet, there is a lot of tension between them, with Buffy in particular feeling threatened by Faith. But as their relationship progresses, this tension moves from rivalry into something more romantic in nature.

All of this culminates in what I would describe as the three key points in Faith’s character arc: Season 3’s “Bad Girls,” Season 4’s “Yesterday’s Girl / Who Are You,” and Season 7’s “Dirty Girls.”

In “Bad Girls” (an episode title that tells us a lot about the show’s attitude to Faith’s “deviant behavior”), the chemistry between Buffy and Faith reaches its climax. Faith is set up as “seducing” Buffy into her way of thinking and, despite herself, Buffy responds. The sexual tension between them is sizzling… until everything goes wrong, of course. Faith accidentally kills a man and doesn’t trust Buffy to protect her from the harsh punishment she knows will follow. Thus begins Faith’s descent into evil.

After this, Faith and Buffy behave more like scorned exes than nemeses (“Is that how you say the word?”) until their final showdown (which mirrors the previous season’s showdown with ex-turned-evil, Angel) where Buffy puts Faith in a coma.

Faith awakens from her coma in Season 4’s “Yesterday’s Girl / Who Are You,” and again, acts like a scorned lover when she finds out Buffy has “moved on” from her, grabbing her chance to finally possess Buffy, quite literally, by stealing her body using a body-swap spell. However, she discovers that even total possession of Buffy cannot heal the pain of her rejection. Faith leaves at the end of this episode to seek redemption and does not return to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although she does appear on Angel) until Season 7’s “Dirty Girls” (another interesting name choice for an episode focused on the return of Faith).

In “Dirty Girls,” we meet a reformed Faith, whose new-found maturity is almost immediately tested by a barb to her sorest spot – another rejection from Buffy, who failed to warn her that there’s a new evil afoot that specifically targets slayers. But Faith rises above and we start to believe that perhaps she has managed to move on. We even get to see her turn down an opportunity that the old Faith would never have been able to resist – a chance to try to seduce Buffy’s love interest (Spike). The audience gets to marvel at reformed Faith’s growth and maturity as a character, that is, until she utters this seemingly throwaway line, “I just spent a good stretch of time locked away with a mess of female-types. Kinda had my fill.”

The unfortunate implication becomes that Faith has quite literally “straightened out.” Faith no longer has “deviant” bisexual urges; Faith is no longer a “dirty girl”; Faith has reformed.

Conclusion

Despite what was at the time a groundbreaking portrayal of a loving lesbian relationship, Buffy the Vampire Slayer still had many issues in its messaging surrounding queer sexualities, in particular bisexuality. In my opinion, a few material changes could have gone a long way in removing at least some of this negative messaging.

The first crucial step would have been to remove the show’s tendency to use bisexuality as a shorthand for evil. The second step would have been to introduce some positive examples of bisexual people who fight on the side of good – here, the idea of Willow’s character identifying as bisexual (while Tara and Kennedy still identify as exclusively lesbian) feels like a hugely missed opportunity. However, this character wouldn’t necessarily have to be Willow. There were plenty of opportunities for other bisexual characters, male and female, within the show’s seven season run. And finally, bringing Faith’s sexuality and unrequited love arc from subtext to text, with the proviso that when she reforms, it’s not because she’s no longer bisexual, would work well, provided it wasn’t set to a backdrop that codes bisexuality as depraved. With better representation of bisexuality in the Buffyverse generally, Faith’s arc would be the story of an individual who happens to be bisexual, not a classic Depraved Bisexual stereotype.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Willow Rosenberg a Lesbian or Bisexual?
Exploring Bisexual Tension in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine

Lisa Ward is a Faith fangirl who works in PR, writes songs, and lives on a wind-blasted island in the North Sea. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a bunch of other places she’s probably forgotten about as @sheltielisa.

Exploring Bisexual Tension in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’

The possibility existed to use season 3 to explore the sexual identity of three very central female characters in this show. Buffy could have been questioning; Faith could have been explicitly bisexual rather than simply implying as much through very sexually-charged dialogue with Buffy; Willow could have started exploring her sexuality earlier to arrive at a more self-aware place, whether that was as a bisexual woman or a lesbian.

This guest post written by Audrey T. Carroll appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Nearly twenty years have passed since the beginning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we’re still having conversations about this TV show. The conversations range from the creepiest monsters to the most empowering moments of feminism the series has to offer. One of the staying discussions regarding Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been the queer identities of its characters. Certainly, the series invites this as it centralizes a same-sex romance in season 4 with Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson). The couple wasn’t even allowed to kiss until the season 5 episode “The Body.” There’s no doubt that having a same-sex couple was trail-blazing for a television series to tackle.

That said, we now have the benefit of a retrospective view of both the series and the fifteen intervening years of LGBTQ rights progress since “The Body” first aired. Viewers can now easily recognize that bisexuality is never overtly represented in the series, and is in fact never even brought up as a possibility. But the groundwork for bisexual/queer interpretation is present. This especially comes into play when people bring up the idea of bi erasure and Willow. The possibility of bisexuality in season 3 in particular could have enhanced an already tense triangle of Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Faith (Eliza Dushku), and Willow. In addition to the scrutiny of Willow’s sexuality in recent years, the obvious sexual tension between Buffy and Faith, especially originating from Faith, is never outright articulated in a consequential way. There’s, of course, the platonic friendship aspect to the tension of this triangle where Willow feels like she’s losing her best friend to Faith.

But these women present three angles on potential queerness that many viewers would have connected with:

1) Buffy must be “good” at all times, which includes being virginal (see: Angelus becoming a monster after they have sex). Potentially, this expectation of being the “good” slayer could include heteronormativity. But, in the comics, the slayer is willing to explore her sexuality.

2) Faith, in part, defines herself by using and ditching men as nothing more important than the sex they give her and the sense of power she feels with them.

3) At this stage in her life, Willow is in a committed relationship with Oz (Seth Green), but she clearly possessed an attraction to women that she had yet to discover.

While she’s otherwise dated, Buffy only had sexual experience with one person by season 3: Angel (David Boreanaz). In season 2, they had sex once, Angel turned into a soulless monster, and she eventually had to kill him. He’s resurrected, but they know they can’t fully be together. This sexual tension with Angel runs parallel to Buffy’s sexual tension with Faith. Buffy acknowledges, in season 3 and beyond, that her relationship with Faith can be perceived as more than simple friendship or fellow slayer-hood. In the season 3 episode “Revelations,” Buffy even draws attention to the fact that she “wouldn’t use the word ‘dating,’” for who she has plans with that night and, when Faith shows up as her partner for the evening, goes on to say, “Really, we’re just good friends.” In that same vein, Buffy claims in the season 7 episode “End of Days,” that “I am tired of defensiveness and — and weird mixed signals… I have Faith for that.”

In the comics, Buffy is, to quote creator Joss Whedon, “young and experimenting and… open-minded.” Even if this is a questioning moment of her sexuality, rather than an actual declaration of bisexuality, the possibility of this exploration earlier in the series could have ramped up the tension even further between Buffy and Faith and Willow, making the stakes all the more intense. It could also show that being the “good” slayer didn’t come with the implication of celibacy or heteronormativity as a requirement. If Buffy, the hero, the one who many girls aspired to be, could question her sexuality and explore her sexuality, that could create a connection to her, and a comfort for viewers who are inclined to do the same. It would, of course, have to be handled delicately, but if executed well it could have been a really revolutionary examination of identity and a fascinating aspect for the hero.

On Faith’s end, she infuses a lot of her words and actions with sexual innuendo. Often, her sexuality is tied to extracting from men what she wants — power, physical satisfaction, etc. The season 3 episode “Bad Girls” opens with Faith insisting that Buffy must have had sex with her friend Xander (Nicholas Brendon): “What are friends for? … It’s just, all this sweating nightly, side-by-side action, and you never put in for a little after-hours…” Faith insinuates that slaying together leads to sex, in the midst of her and Buffy slaying vampires together. One look at any number of Faith’s lines of dialogue with Buffy shows possibility for sexual interpretation (“Give us a kiss.”) if not outright mentions of sexual acts (“Bondage looks good on you, B.” or “So let’s have another go at it. See who lands on top.”). And this isn’t even to mention the very provocative dance scene the pair of slayers share at The Bronze during “Bad Girls.”

If Faith’s bisexuality were actively articulated, it could underscore an interesting layer to the eventual deterioration of their relationship. It seems that the path Buffy toys with in “Bad Girls” is not only one of (mostly harmless) rule-breaking. Buffy appears to be entertaining a very flirtatious and charged relationship with Faith. Faith is very lonely and wants acceptance and friendship. If you add to the pot that both of them were pursuing each other in a romantic or sexual sense, then Faith’s feeling of rejection (from the Scoobies in general, but Buffy in particular) feels like a more pointed one. In this framing, there’s even greater motivation for Faith to later hurt Buffy romantically by going after Angel and engaging in a twisted relationship with him merely to taunt the “good” slayer.

As mentioned already, Willow is often brought up in terms of bi erasure. If the possibility of her queerness is brought up in season 3, it lengthens the exploration of her sexuality and allows for her to deepen her understanding of it. By season 3, she’s only been sexually interested in Xander and her boyfriend Oz. If it were introduced that she may be sexually attracted to women, it would allow for a more fully fleshed-out representation of her sexuality over the course of the series. In fact, in the season 3 episode “Doppelgangland,” Willow thinks that the vampire alternate-dimension version of herself is “kinda gay.” Buffy assures her the vampire version of a person is nothing like the real person. Angel starts to correct her, but stops. All of this implies that, from at least season 3, Willow has her “kinda gay” self bubbling under the surface.

One of two things could’ve happened here: 1) Willow could have discovered she was bisexual, and maybe even been afraid this would cause Oz to reject her. That’s a fear that bisexual people in hetero relationships might be able to relate to. 2) Alternatively, Willow could have discovered that she was, in fact, a lesbian. This explicit exploration would have made how she self-identifies feel more genuine. Otherwise, her season five “Triangle” declaration of “gay now” feels like a tight clinging to a label rather than a genuine expression of her sexuality. If that exploration and determination happens earlier and more clearly, then the viewer can feel that conclusion is natural. It gives opportunity to address her sexuality in a more fully realized way.

One potential discrimination against bisexual people is the idea that they can’t be in a long-term committed relationship, rooted in the idea that they’ll pursue the opposite type of relationship than the one that they’re currently in (either same-sex or opposite-sex). If Willow is bisexual, and clearly so in the show, then the fight that she and Tara have in the season 5 episode “Tough Love” has more context. It’s possible, with a lesbian-identifying Willow, that Tara fears Willow may “turn straight” again. But a review of their history makes this implication during their fight feel strange. (Willow, after all, turned down Oz when he returned to town toward the end of season 4, actively choosing Tara over her first boyfriend.) But, with the idea that Willow is bisexual in mind, this fight with Tara could have tapped into an anxiety in the queer community — that bi people are more sexually deviant or less romantically loyal because they’re not monosexual.

This sexual identity questioning would also lend more tension to the whole Buffy/Faith/Willow triangle. In addition to the platonic threads there, Buffy and Faith already have an established, if not candidly articulated, sexual tension. Adding Willow’s sexual identity to the mix, she could have questioned whether her jealousy of the Buffy/Faith dynamic was platonic or romantic on her part. Buffy is her closest friend, except for maybe Xander, the latter of which she had a crush on for years and cheated on Oz with. Willow could reasonably fear that an attraction or possibility of attraction toward Buffy (akin to what she once felt for Xander) could jeopardize their friendship. On the other side, Willow might have been confused or unnerved if she thought she might be attracted to Faith, who was her opposite in many ways and with whom she had a very contentious relationship. She might not have thought about Buffy or Faith that way, but the questioning and anxieties there might have resonated with certain queer viewers and enhanced Willow’s aversion to Faith even further.

Using the context of future seasons, the possibility existed to use season 3 to explore the sexual identity of three very central female characters in this show. Buffy could have been questioning; Faith could have been explicitly bisexual rather than simply implying as much through very sexually-charged dialogue with Buffy; Willow could have started exploring her sexuality earlier to arrive at a more self-aware place, whether that was as a bisexual woman or a lesbian.

This all at least highlights an opportunity for future fiction. Allowing characters to be bisexual or to entertain the idea of not being heterosexual can add innovative layers to otherwise developed and intriguing characters. In the end, whether these characters are bisexual or simply open to questioning their heterosexuality, representation helps people feel less alone in their experiences, and ultimately guides people toward empathy.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine
Are You Ready to Be Strong? Power and Sisterhood in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Audrey T. Carroll is a Queens, NYC native whose obsessions include kittens, coffee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Rooster Teeth community. Her poetry collection, Queen of Pentacles, is available from Choose the Sword Press. She can be found on her site as well as Twitter and Facebook.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and the Humanization of the Superheroine

Often carrying the burden of representation in a genre overrun with male characters, superheroines were strong or weak, clear-headed or in constant need of saving, but rarely complex or allowed complicated internal lives, and even more rarely truly relatable. Buffy changed all that.

This guest post written by Kaitlyn Soligan appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Before there was a girl on fire, or a woman in an office with a drinking problem and a dark history, before there was, even, a cheerleader whose salvation could save the world, there was the chosen one. She alone would stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She was the slayer.

Our generation’s slayer was Buffy Summers, and she was a mess. By turns bubbly and serious, flirtatious and driven, insecure and confident, Buffy Summers worried about boys and her birthright, rising demons and her parents’ divorce, algebra and the somehow ever-present threat of global apocalypse. While there were superheroines on page and screen long before Buffy – the iconic Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and X-Men like Storm were represented on both – none had ever been allowed to be so human, particularly on television and in movies, where they were mostly absent. Often carrying the burden of representation in a genre overrun with male characters, superheroines were strong or weak, clear-headed or in constant need of saving, but rarely complex or allowed complicated internal lives, and even more rarely truly relatable.

Buffy changed all that.

Buffy worried about make-up, her curfew, whether or not a boy liked her, and how she would ever get her homework done on time in the moments between plunging a stake into the heart of multiple attacking vampires. Over the objections of her guardian Giles, a stand-in for the stuffy and outdated rules about how superheroines should behave, she made friends and went on dates, and still managed to slay demons and kill monsters. She was funny and goofy and sweet and deadly serious when occasion called for it. Buffy broke hearts and had hers broken, said things she shouldn’t to lovers and friends and family, hurt people and stood beside them when they needed her most. She was phenomenally imperfect as a woman and as a heroine.

Buffy’s battles, real and metaphorical (and occasionally metaphorically revealing what was all too real), panned the camera to the battles of girls more generally and forced it to linger on what was uncomfortable and almost always previously unacknowledged. In “Out of Mind, Out of Sight,” Buffy fights an invisible foe who turns out to be a fellow classmate who disappeared for lack of attention. The episode examines the visibility of the female and the female body – and the ways these related to the feminine – in multiple ways, with Buffy and her classmate Cordelia battling for the title of May Queen before battling for their lives. Many episodes dealt with intimate partner violence; in “Ted” Buffy battles her mother’s violent boyfriend, while in “Beauty and the Beasts” she faces a classmate abusing his girlfriend. Throughout all of these episodes and arcs, Buffy is both average – experiencing jealousy, vulnerability, the need for company and compassion, pushing her friends and family away and then pulling them back in close – and superhuman, fighting against unnatural forces with equally unnatural strength.

Buffy’s humanity also marked one of the earliest moments of feminism brought to bear on the superhero genre – not a mere personal feminism limited to character portrayals, but a structural feminism, with an acknowledgement of structural systems of oppression, played out within and on characters and throughout story lines. In “Out of Mind, Out of Sight,” Buffy faces the structural systems that exploit women’s bodies and turn them against one another as competitors. In “Ted,” her mother’s boyfriend is controlling and manipulative, gaslighting her, an eons-long practice even before we had a succinctly encompassing term for it. In “Beauty and the Beasts,” Buffy faces her classmate’s reality as a victim of assault while simultaneously exploring her own past as a survivor of abuse. Buffy and the other female characters were constantly underestimated because they were women. No episode ended with a neat lesson in which every male character realized the error of their ways and repented, and this underestimation often had long-term, structural, and painfully realistic consequences for the characters.

While Buffy’s humanization broke new ground for superheroines, it also brought into relief against that image the limits of what was still possible on television. While the many white female characters on the show were deliberately complex, the first featured recurring Black character, Kendra, was largely two-dimensional. Bearing the burden of representation, Kendra’s efforts to find acceptance through perfection reflected the limits experienced by women of color, a choice between being “good” and acknowledged, or not good enough and ignored, pushed further back into the margins both visually and narratively. While Black male characters on the show – most notably the cool and organized Mr. Trick and the steady and almost unbearably sexy Principal Wood – were good and evil, kind and ruthlessly ambitious, flawed and righteous by turns, Black female characters came in by inches and retreated just as quickly back outside the frame.

In Season 7, at the end of the series’ television run, Buffy discovers that her powers come from a spell cast long ago by men in Africa who needed a protector. One girl was chosen – likely not voluntarily – to be that protector: the First Slayer. And her power passed from one generation to the next. Buffy’s power is literally drawn from a history of Black women around the world; their sacrifices over thousands of years have enabled her rebellion from girl soldier to human being over the objections of a system designed to imprison, use, and discard her. As a white woman in her own place and time, Buffy could do what they could not.

In the end, Buffy enlists another woman, Willow, a powerful witch and, not incidentally, one of the first recurring LGBTQ characters on television, to reclaim and redistribute that first power, allowing every girl in the world with the potential to become a Slayer to rise up simultaneously, together. The act was at its heart a symbolic gesture hearkening to the notion that white women whose privilege has been gained at the ongoing expense of many other women, particularly women of color, have a responsibility to both destroy the system and build a better one, one that has far more universal benefit. In her final moments, Buffy chose between being special – one girl in all the world – and building a platform on which she would be only one of many, only as special as she made herself, meaningful not at the expense of others’ lack, but of her own making – as her own woman.

She went to prom and saved her classmates from a giant dragon. She mourned the loss of her mother and fought a fallen God. She fell in love and died and got aggravated with her roommates and worked in fast food and slayed demons. 2017 will mark 20 years since Buffy first aired, and Buffy would be truly old for a slayer now – nearly 40. If she felt all her years and more at sixteen, with her outsized responsibilities, one can only imagine how she would feel today, and it’s understandable: Buffy is the grandmother of the modern superheroine. These dark, flawed, occasionally failed, damaged, traumatized, real girls and women onscreen and in comics – from Katniss Everdeen to Jessica Jones to Joss Whedon’s own later heroines like Firefly’s Zoe – owe a great deal to the strides Buffy made in her complexity, her humanity, her failings, and her growth alike, as do we. After all, she saved the world. A lot.

Kaitlyn Soligan is a writer and editor from Boston living in Louisville, Kentucky. She writes about that, and bourbon, at www.ivehadworseideas.com. You can follow her on twitter @ksoligan.

Nobody Puts Susan Cooper in the Basement: Melissa McCarthy and Skillful, Competent Violence in Film

As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

This guest post by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

I love violent women. Maybe this is an odd thing to say; maybe it’s not. And I should qualify my statement by specifying that I love violent women in TV and film, not at my local grocery store. But oh, how I love a self-possessed Milla Jovovich stomping her thick-soled boot squarely into some thug’s gut, or a zinger-slinging Sarah Michelle Gellar tossing a spike straight through a vampire’s sternum.

But far too often it seems that filmmakers find violent women more acceptable when those women are either victims retaliating against violence (like in almost every horror movie ever made. ever.), psychopaths (Fatal Attraction; Basic Instinct; To Die For), or extorted to choose violence over death (Nikita). The spotlight rarely shines on women who are required to be violent during the course of their (lawful) day-to-day jobs, and who are not only competent, but who excel at those jobs. Yes, we have officers of the law Marge Gunderson (Fargo) and Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs); but Marge is part of a male-dominated ensemble, and Clarice is an agent-in-training who is used as a pawn and lied to by her male superior, and who relies on the help of a male criminal for clues and, in a way, mentorship.

Clarice can’t seem to shake Hannibal

But what happens when a woman is in a lawful profession, is competent, and is given the tools and information she needs to do her job? Well, this kind of woman hasn’t starred in many films, which is why the Paul Feig vehicle Spy starring Melissa McCarthy is such a…dare I say revolution?

As I considered Spy and the way McCarthy, playing CIA agent Susan Cooper, uses and responds to violence throughout the film, I asked myself if she truly was a new mold of a violent woman in film:

Is she being hunted? No.
Is she avenging a violence (physical, sexual) done against her? Nope.
Is she used for window dressing as men in the film kick ass? Not a chance.
Is she fully possessed of her faculties (i.e. no memory loss, mental illness)? She sure as hell is.

But I didn’t stop after I’d checked all of the boxes. I wanted to know what made Spy different from Feig’s other film featuring female law-enforcement agents, The Heat (2013). It isn’t just that Spy gives us a glamor—in McCarthy’s hair, makeup, and wardrobe (eventually), the decadent settings, and the European luxury. And it isn’t just that Spy takes its female lead very seriously—though it’s a comedy, Susan Cooper is self-aware and always in on the joke, never the joke itself. Spy is, however, different from The Heat—and from most other female-driven films—in how its main character uses violence in a competent, purposeful, and honest way.

Our first glimpse into Susan’s efficiency and…exuberance with violence is when the deputy director (Allison Janney) plays a decade-old video showing Cooper dive-rolling and shooting expertly through a training exercise. Cooper is fast and accurate, and although she seems embarrassed about the video, her supervisor is openly impressed.

Janney is another female actor I’d like to see kick some ass

Once Cooper’s mission starts, she takes step after step into more and more violence, and with each new challenge—a knife fight with a bomber in Paris; a quick-thinking trip-and-push in Rome; an in-flight spar with an armed flight attendant—she demonstrates both a willingness to be violent and a skillfulness to execute what needs to be done.

But Cooper’s best tricks start in Budapest, where she becomes more violent both physically as well as verbally. Cooper must lie to Rayna (Rose Byrne) to cover her identity, and, in the blink of an eye, she transforms into a filthy-mouthed bodyguard (“good gravy” replaced with “limp-dicked unicorn”). After this transition, Cooper’s quick-on-her-feet actions range from assaulting a man with her cell phone to making an impromptu decoy and smashing a fire extinguisher onto the heads of two bodyguards to escape capture.

Feig, as a director of female violence, and McCarthy, as the subject acting out this violence, shine in their respective roles, but they shine brightest during the beautifully choreographed fight between Cooper and a French female baddie in a green jumpsuit. The fight takes place in the kitchen of a nightclub, and Cooper uses dinner rolls, a baguette, frying pans, and finally a kitchen knife to attack and defend. As she dodges swings and blows, her reactions are sharp and athletic. Cooper grabs her opponent by the waist and brings her to ground like she is just a sack of rice; she plunges a knife into her opponent’s palm. And on the other side of the camera, Feig gives McCarthy the same treatment he gave Jude Law at the start of the movie when Law (playing CIA agent Bradley Fine), perfectly coifed and tuxedoed, does slow motion roundhouse kicks at plate-faced bodyguards. As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

One could make an argument that Susan Cooper must adopt a persona in order to explore this violence, and that it does not represent the “true” woman—the woman who bakes, has trouble getting the bartender’s attention, and might wear a “lumpy, pumpkin sack-dress” out to dinner. But I don’t agree with that argument. Cooper’s violence is not just a persona she wears in the field. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who follows the jumpsuit-wearing assassin into the kitchen, seeking out the conflict rather than hiding from it. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who head-butts Bradley Fine when she’s tied up in a dungeon. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who gets a field promotion because she has, in essence, saved the goddamned day.

Too long have men had the privilege of having so much fun (and looking so good) with violence in film. Let’s hope that more female directors pick up this mantle, and that more women are given the opportunity to shine as the centers of films where they can punch, kick, and shoot without the added context of victimhood or psychopathy. Give us more opportunities to be violent. Because, filmmakers, let’s be honest: it’s about time.

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects and follow her on Twitter.

#iamnotavessel: Joss Whedon’s Romantic Reproductive Coercion

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

Ripley, loving her "beautiful, beautiful little baby" — Ripley, loving her “beautiful, beautiful little baby”

Written by Brigit McCone.

The Alien saga offers some of the most powerful images of bodily violation in pop culture, from the metaphorical rape of the facehuggers to the victim’s resulting fatal impregnation. Ridley “Thelma and Louise“ Scott* fostered male empathy by casting John Hurt as the victim of this violation, while Sigourney Weaver’s badass Ellen Ripley defeated the monster. The sequel, Aliens, saw Ripley voluntarily assume maternal responsibility for a young girl, Newt, and fight an iconic battle against the Alien Queen to save her adopted child. In Alien3, Ripley realized she had been impregnated with an Alien Queen, and made a conscious decision to destroy herself and it. Then, in 1997, celebrated male feminist Joss Whedon scripted a fourth film in the series, Alien: Resurrection, which revived Ripley as an Alien/human hybrid clone.

When her identity is challenged, Ripley/Alien smiles, “I’m the monster’s mother,” equating motherhood with forced cloning in a lab. Realizing that Aliens have escaped, Ripley/Alien grins, later clarifying, “I’m finding a lot of things funny lately, but I don’t think they are.” Merging with the Alien has rendered her emotional responses irrational. As Ripley/Alien is anguished at being forced to destroy a room full of fellow clones, Ron Perlman’s pirate snorts “must be a chick thing”, in a franchise founded on transgressive gender-bending. Ripley/Alien weeps openly at the death of the Newborn, an Alien/human hybrid which has already devoured the brains of two people (including the film’s final person of color), which Brad Dourif’s scientist described as her “beautiful, beautiful little baby.” Whedon and director Jeunet thus systematically demolish Ridley Scott’s original metaphor by consistently representing Ripley’s experience of forced maternity as akin to both chosen motherhood and loss of self, and essentially different from the forced impregnation and reproductive coercion of the male characters.

Maternity may be forced, but motherhood is always voluntary. An adopted mother is a true mother, as Ripley is to Newt. An egg donor, a surrogate or a clone is not automatically a mother, as Ripley is not to the Newborn. Reducing the complexity of motherhood to automatic biology also implies that bad mothers are unnatural, rather than flawed humans, which aspiring writers may wish to explore in this Theme Week. As for Alien: Resurrection, Whedon’s ending was changed and he claims “they said the lines…mostly…but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do.” However, three aspects of Whedon’s role as author of Alien: Resurrection still deserve scrutiny. Firstly, that it consistently rewrites and undermines the original feminist purpose of Ridley Scott’s Alien. Secondly, that it is only one of numerous dehumanizing portraits of forced maternity in the work of Joss Whedon. Thirdly, that Whedon’s status as a vocal male feminist does not restrain him from perpetuating this trope.

Sixteen percent of pregnant women surveyed by Lindsay Clark M.D. had been subjected to reproductive coercion (the sabotaging of birth control or the use of threat by male partners to force pregnancy). In a survey of women using family planning services, fully 35 percent of those who experienced partner violence had also been subjected to reproductive coercion. Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction is an iconic representation of terrifying reproductive coercion, but I can think of no equivalent portrayal of reproductive coercion by male characters targeting women, despite its staggering frequency in reality. Nobody wants to confront the possibility that a child might be unwanted, especially by their own mother. However, if we can’t admit that an acid-spitting, brain-eating Alien-child might ever, possibly, be unwanted, our denial has become dehumanizing. Male-authored horror, focusing disproportionately on women as victims of supernatural possession, almost invariably implies that women can be drained of selfhood and controlled by reproductive coercion, supporting the ideology of real-life abusers.

In The Omen, Gregory Peck’s father must confront and attempt to destroy his demon spawn while, in Rosemary’s Baby, Mia Farrow’s mother gently rocks her demon spawn’s cradle with a tender smile. Paternity is an emotional bond mediated by rational judgment, while maternity inevitably entails loss of the rational self. Some female directors have challenged this trope. In Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, a mother’s love is alienated by her child’s sadism, joining the conflicted but humanized mothers of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, and Kimberley Peirce’s reimagined Carrie. Meanwhile, Roman “Rosemary’s Baby” Polanski, self-confessed rapist, has stated publicly that the birth control Pill “chases away the romance from our lives.” While celebrated male feminist Joss Whedon probably wouldn’t endorse that statement, his romanticized reproductive coercion nevertheless reflects that ideology.

Sady Doyle has praised Whedon’s Dollhouse for its exploration of the sinister implications of reducing women to manipulable male fantasy. As Doyle argues, Dollhouse can even be read as an interrogation of Whedon’s own role, as a writer who converts living actresses into creations of his fantasy. However, Doyle also highlights problems with the second season episode “Instinct,” which suggests that Echo’s being forcibly imprinted, to believe herself a mother, produces a biological response that cannot be erased, even though the woman’s entire personality can be erased, “because the Maternal Instinct has magical science-defying powers of undying devotion which are purely biological and not at all circumstantial” (Doyle’s words). Although the show’s entire point is the essential creepiness of depriving a human of consent, ‘Instinct’ suggests that the maternal instinct is capable of converting forced maternity into a positive experience. Nor is Dollhouse the only example of this.

Dawn, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is conceived by monks reprogramming the characters’ memories and emotions, echoing Dollhouse‘s premise. Since Dawn is an innocent and vulnerable being, Buffy’s decision to protect her is consistent with her established character as a natural rescuer, akin to Ripley’s decision to protect Newt at any cost. However, the show barely allows Buffy five minutes of outrage over the monks’ traumatic violation of her memories and emotional self (without even considering the implications of her fake robot pregnancy in the comics, or Black Widow’s becoming “monster” by sterilization because… dude). Like Echo’s positive experience of forced maternity, Buffy’s maternal instinct towards Dawn effectively cancels out the violation of Dawn’s conception. In the third season of Whedon’s Angel, the evil Darla’s entire personality alters through pregnancy, as she becomes mysteriously infected by the soul of her Prophecyfetus, recalling Ripley’s personality shift through Alien impregnation. Not only is Darla/Prophecyfetus redeemed by an explicitly unwanted pregnancy, but expresses her redemption through self-annihilation, staking herself to allow her baby’s birth.

Self-annihilation is likewise the ultimate expression of Buffy’s maternal instinct, the heroine killing herself for Dawn, her corpse bathed in the hopeful light of a new dawn (subtle). I can’t recall any comparable example of voluntary, fatherly self-annihilation as redemptive in the work of celebrated male feminist Joss Whedon (and even Michael Bay gave us Armageddon). Simon’s sacrifices, as adopted father-figure (and safeword-wielding controller) of sister River Tam, are rewarded with Kaylee’s love in Serenity, while Angel heroically chooses to wipe his son’s memory when paternity becomes too troublesome, and Giles dramatically rejects Buffy when she becomes too independent. Sure, there are complex undercurrents of male self-loathing and idolized female sacrifice going on here, but I can’t see how that actually empowers Whedon’s (routinely mind-controlled) women. As Angel points out in Angel‘s fourth season: “our fate has to be our own, or we’re nothing.” By this measure, Whedon’s women are constantly reduced to “nothing” by maternity.

When it comes to reproductive coercion, nothing beats the treatment of Cordelia Chase on Angel. Already forcibly impregnated by mind-controlling demon spawn in the first season’s “Expecting,” Cordelia agrees in “Birthday” to become half-demon herself, as an act of self-sacrifice to spare Angel from head-splitting visions. She eventually “transcends love” to become an omniscient “higher being” of pure light, but finds herself “so bored” by this power, echoing the vocal dissatisfaction of Whedon’s Ripley, Call, Buffy, Willow, Faith, and River Tam. If Whedon’s superstrong women didn’t all commiserate with each other about the terrible burden of power, they’d barely pass a Bechdel. In Season Four’s opener, Angel is trapped at the bottom of the sea, hallucinating visions of happiness with Cordelia. In one vision, Cordelia pledges her love as self-annihilation, foreshadowing the amnesia inflicted on her when she rejoins Angel, “I can’t remember what it was like, not knowing you”, before Angel vamps and drains her blood. At another vision’s cheerful feast, Cordelia exclaims “kill me now before my stomach explodes,” foreshadowing her next demon pregnancy, in which Cordy’s mind will be possessed yet again by the soul of her Doomfetus, just as Darla/Prophecyfetus and Ripley/Alien were.

Jasmine, the possessing being, forces Cordelia to seduce Angel’s son, Connor, primarily to provoke conflict between the male heroes, but also to conceive Jasmine’s Doomfetus vessel. Appearing in a vision, as the maternal mouthpiece of The Powers That Be, a reproductively purified and ex-evil Darla informs her son, Connor, that the fate of the world now depends on his choice, since Cordelia’s agency has been reproductively annihilated (Darla merely implies that last part). Cordelia is then forced into a coma by the birth of her demon spawn, just as Darla was dusted while giving birth, or Whedon’s Alien Queen decapitated by her Newborn. Meanwhile, Cordelia/Doomfetus has found time to bring forth a Doomsday Beast to destroy the sun (women are great at multitasking), forcing our hero, Angel, to lose his soul for various complex reasons, but mainly to confirm Cordy’s boundless power as mindless maternal mouthpiece. Powerful as she is, Cordelia’s lack of agency nevertheless reduces her, by Angel’s own logic, to “nothing.” Incidentally, Whedon’s treatment of actress Charisma Carpenter did nothing to dispel this impression.

Unmarried, pregnant Cordelia Chase is literally demonized

This feels familiar to an Irish viewer. Our feminine ideal, the “Wild Irish Woman,” gave us warrior goddesses, but never prevented pregnant girls being institutionalized as slave labor (a cultural demonizing of unmarried mothers criticized by Dorothy Macardle and Mairéad Ní Ghráda, before Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters and Stephen Frears’ Philomena drew international attention). Our pirate queen got her nationalist anthem, but our women had their pelvises broken by crippling symphysiotomy until the 1980s without anesthetic, for fear caesareans would encourage use of birth control. We boast history’s second female minister in government, army officer Constance Markievicz, but just last year, a woman raped by the murderers of people close to her underwent forced hydration (she was on hunger strike, becoming suicidal after five months pleading for an abortion) before a coerced C-section (her visa status prevented travel). Believe us, there is no connection whatsoever between celebrating women’s warrior spirit and respecting their reproductive rights. I’m a fan of Buffy. I also understand that teams of writers are involved, though Joss Whedon is ultimately responsible for the content of his television shows. I hate his portraits of reproductive coercion because this ideology repeatedly tortures and kills the most vulnerable women in my country. It’s nothing personal. Images of late-term abortions are commodified by Ireland’s forced maternity lobby, while the faces of suicidal rape victims and the corpses of women who died, denied medically necessary abortions, cannot be shown, ironically out of respect for their personhood; this is why fictional images of forced maternity become a battleground for hearts and minds. Ultimately, this torture of Ireland’s most vulnerable women is also the end goal of America’s forced maternity lobby.

* Yes, I know the rape scene in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is problematic. It’s not like the rapid rise in ass-kicking heroines was matched by a rise in female authorship. Time for a “Microscope on Male Feminists” feature?

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling, ducking and covering in anticipation of Whedonite backlash.

My Love-Hate Relationship With Joss Whedon

It started when I was 13. Some friends and I went to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It sounded like a lovely idea. A movie with a cheerleader as lead for my more “girly” friends, a vampire flick with a female heroine for me and the guy friends who were dragged along on this group “date” and just wanted to see vampires. It wasn’t like we had a choice–none of us had a car, and this was the only thing playing that we were old enough to watch at the theater our parents dropped us off at. I thought it would be perfect until it occurred to me in the lobby, while procuring nachos and popcorn, that this film was devised to please everyone, and usually when movies set out to please everyone, they pleased no one. But, it was a movie, and on a hot summer day that meant air conditioning; plus, there would be vampires, a female heroine and that was all I needed to give it a try.

The cast of Dollhouse — The cast of *Dollhouse*

This is a guest post by Shay Revolver.

It started when I was 13. Some friends and I went to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It sounded like a lovely idea. A movie with a cheerleader as lead for my more “girly” friends, a vampire flick with a female heroine for me and the guy friends who were dragged along on this group “date” and just wanted to see vampires. It wasn’t like we had a choice–none of us had a car, and this was the only thing playing that we were old enough to watch at the theater our parents dropped us off at. I thought it would be perfect until it occurred to me in the lobby, while procuring nachos and popcorn, that this film was devised to please everyone, and usually when movies set out to please everyone, they pleased no one. But, it was a movie, and on a hot summer day that meant air conditioning; plus, there would be vampires, a female heroine and that was all I needed to give it a try.

I sat, I watched, I was stuck somewhere between annoyance and amusement that my nachos weren’t the only thing in that theater covered in cheese. It seemed like for every great thing about the movie there was something equally as bad, if not worse. Even at that age, I worried that the film would be remembered more for the five-minute vamp death rattle scene at the end than for the female lead. Being the resident cinephile, or film-loving smart ass, I tried to save the film by saying it was supposed to be campy. In my head that was the only way I could wrap my mind around what had just occurred. I worried that if the film wasn’t successful there would be no more films with strong female leads–that we would have to keep being arm candy and damsels. Everything that made her complex, easy to relate to and bad ass was turned into a joke. I left the theater feeling sad.

In the interim, there were other films with strong female leads that caught my eye. Some of them were American but most of the time, I had to turn my gaze to the art houses and screening rooms of the East Village and Lower East Side. The women I was looking for could only be found in indie and foreign films. Sure, there was the pop up complex, bad ass heroine (or antihero) here and there beaming in beauty once in a while on the big screens of the mainstream, but they were so few an far between that I could count them on one hand and very rarely did they resonate in the way the other films did. Then something different happened. Studying in my dorm for midterms, during a very crazy junior year with my brain frying and a cold brewing, I turned on my TV and on some random network, there was Buffy. Buffy 2.0. to be exact, and in all of its campy goodness I could not turn away.

There was a woman on TV, being bad ass and somewhat complex (as complex as a teenage girl could realistically be), and I along with millions of other people ate it up. On the surface, it was beautiful and a pleasure to watch. In my philosophy studying brain it was full of conflicts, ideas and other interesting complexities. As the series progressed there was less complexity in Buffy and more complications. During the series run, much like the movie, I found that for every step forward there was a step sideways, often back. But, I couldn’t turn away. In my head I juggled with the bizarre coincidence that Buffy’s “virtue” was linked to the sanity of all the men around her. Her virginity literally turned Angel evil. It was a pattern that played out throughout most of the show. Her sexuality was a prize to be given and taken at will. It was also her downfall. She would be punished for choosing to express her sexuality, for having desires, for not being the “proper girl.” It was one of the themes that bothered me throughout the show.

When discussing how male writers and directors portray women and their “complexities,” the name that gets called out the most is Joss Whedon and his strong, complex female hero Buffy Sommers. I, for one, was always team Faith. She was way more complex and realistic than Buffy. I could relate to her. While Buffy spent most of her non-training conversations lamenting over wanting a relationship and kicking ass in between sessions of just trying to get a date, Faith was more concerned with finding herself, being independent, and if love came along, that’d be cool too. She wasn’t nice all the time, she straddled the line of morality and was okay with who she was. She was a creature of pure impulse, turning into the woman she was going to be, who never tried for perfection. Watching her evolve was fascinating. She was like Catwoman to Buffy’s Batman and I could relate. While Buffy went on to have “relationships” that mimicked the plot line of almost every Lifetime movie, Faith was content to be alone instead of settling for the sake of not being alone. She was punished with being labeled as insane for expressing her independence and sexuality.

Sarah Michelle Gellar & James Marsters as (everyone's favorite dysfunctional couple) Buffy and Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer — Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters as (everyone’s favorite dysfunctional couple) Buffy and Spike in *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*

When the short lived Firefly and its companion movie Serenity came to us, in true to Whedon form, the “virgin” lives and is strong. The “whore” is ultimately punished for her ways and although she does manage to survive and ride off into the sunset with Mal, her redemption comes only with settling down with a man to make her honest. While I will forever love the females in power aboard the ship, they were often led astray by their desires. The message often came off as, sorry ladies you can’t have it all. Even the hard-hitting River Tam was as bad ass, complex and brilliant as they came; she was also a virgin and very broken. She had passed the age where her sexuality should be expressed. She was incapable of expressing herself, and she went insane for contact. At the end of the day, the only woman who could save herself was the one who let go of her sexual identity or any idea of companionship, and she remained isolated and broken. Despite her strength, her survival often depended on the men around her.

This trend continued with Dollhouse, where the female bodies were literally used as objects and in a way that can only be expressed as soul rape, they are forced to forget the trauma and sleep until their bodies are called upon to be used again. Yes, in some scenarios these women were called upon to be more than just a warm body in the bed of the highest bidder, only worth what someone else was willing to pay for them, but the disturbing part was that they had no choice in what was happening to them, making it akin to a psychic roofie-style rape. I’ve heard the arguments that men were kept in the dollhouse as well , or that women were in power in the dollhouse, but none of that makes the situation any less horrifying. In the end, Echo is saved by a man. She was rendered incapable of saving herself. I looked away.

That has always been my issue with Joss Whedon’s work. As strong as his female characters are, they’re often on some level tortured and in some ways punished for being exactly what I was looking for in a female lead on TV. They seemed unable to find completion without having a man in their lives. That is what completed them. That was how they found themselves. It was also how they were punished. Buffy couldn’t save the world until she fell in love with her series-long tormentor and almost-rapist Spike. River Tam would collapse under the weight of her own strength. In Dollhouse, all of his female characters were used as pleasure objects and shells for men, and other women were serving as their pimps. There was no end to his female characters’ suffering; their worlds just got grimmer. There was no chance for redemption. Yes, they’re all strong in the traditional sense of the word because it is such a rare thing to see in media, but they’re also all still traditional archetypes.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy that he keeps creating these strong female characters, I wish more male creators would do the same. Gender equality in casting, Salt withstanding, is often hard to come by. I just know that I would love it even more if he wouldn’t make them set up to fail, if he wouldn’t put them in situations where their survival is dependent upon men, or where their happiness was aligned with or subject to the men in their lives. I’m hoping that the Agents of S.H.I.E.L..D. proves me wrong in the long run, and a shift is coming now that he has proved his weight. But so far we’ve already seen one damaged woman, one about to fall prey to her romantic desires, one who lacks sexuality, and another who has been mind controlled. For a very long time Whedon was the only game in town for seeing a continuous flow of strong women in power. Now there are other options, and most of them are women writing and creating roles for other women. It has been proven that there is a market for the characters that Whedon has often said that he wants to create. I see glimpses of these women in the characters that he does portray. Now that he has reached the level that he has in his career, hopefully he will show us these women that he wishes he could have created, shown and brought to fruition as he often laments. I can’t wait to see them.

Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac , recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a NY-based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books , especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies and TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in main stream cinema and television productions.. Twitter @socialslumber13

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Consent Issues (Seasons 1-2)

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

Written by Lady T.

A year ago, I began writing a series called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Consent Issues,” looking at specific episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that included a major plot point related to consent, rape culture, and sexual violence.

What I found was illuminating. The show explored sexual violence, misogyny, and rape culture in a number of episodes. Some of these episodes shone a light on problematic aspects of our society, while others perpetuated rape culture–and some managed to do both at the same time.

Here is a roundup of the posts analyzing specific episodes from seasons one and two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Episode 1.06, “The Pack”: Xander, possessed by the spirit of a predatory animal, attempts to rape Buffy.


Xander (Nicholas Brendon) attacks Buffy while possessed

“Xander isn’t accountable for what he said or did under the hyena possession. I think unintentional, accidental possession by demonic spirits is about as extenuating a circumstance you can get … I do, however, think that the attempted assault scene reveals something less than pleasant about Xander’s character. No, he would never attack Buffy when he was in his right mind, but he does believe that she’s attracted to dangerous men–that if he were dangerous and mean, she would be attracted to him.”

Episode 2.05, “Reptile Boy”: Buffy and Cordelia are offered as human sacrifices in part of a college fraternity’s ritual.

Buffy and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) wait in terror for the frat boy demon to arise

“Even before this scene, we knew that Richard was a bad guy and that the Delta Zeta Kappa guys were up to no good, but we were also led to believe that Buffy’s date, Tom, was the nice guy of the group. We think he’s the only good one of a group of potential rapists, and when he pulls Richard off of Buffy’s unconscious body, our initial inference is confirmed–until we see that Tom is just as bad as the rest, if not worst of all. He was only pretending to be nice to make Buffy trust him. The message is clear: even guys who pretend to be nice and unassuming can be dangerous, and you can’t assume that a self-deprecating ‘nice’ guy is actually a good guy.”

Episode 2.07, “Lie to Me,” and Episode 2.10, “What’s My Line? Part 2”: Angel admits to his former torture of Drusilla, and she takes revenge on him.

Drusilla (Juliet Landau) begins her torture of Angel (David Boreanaz)

“I’ve often thought that Drusilla is the most tragic character on Buffy, and that’s largely because of her relationship with Angel. I think her obsession with Angel is a commentary on molestation and Stockholm Syndrome. I’m not sure how old she was when Angel and Darla turned her into a vampire, but these episodes and a few flashbacks on Angel indicate that she was pretty young, maybe on the verge of turning eighteen. However old she was, the point is that she was ‘pure, sweet, and chaste’–qualities that made Angel obsessed with her, made him want to corrupt her innocence.”

Episode 2.13, “Surprise”: Buffy and Angel have sex, even though Buffy is still under the age of consent.

Buffy and Angel, shortly after escaping death and before sleeping together

“Even though Buffy and Angel sleeping together is wrong from a legal perspective, I have a hard time categorizing this incident as rape. Defining it as rape would rob Buffy of her agency in making that choice to sleep with Angel. She knew exactly what she was doing in the heat of the moment. She wasn’t under the influence of anything, she wasn’t hesitating for a second, and she wanted it to happen … At the same time, Buffy is barely seventeen, and Angel is two hundred and forty. Angel having sex with Buffy at her age and her level of experience is … well, it’s a little gross.”

Episode 2.16, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”: Xander casts a love spell on Cordelia to get back at her for breaking up with him, but the spell affects every woman in town except Cordelia.


Xander walks down the hallway with every girl in Sunnydale High ogling him

“Xander temporarily making Cordelia fall in love with him just so he can break her heart is gross, cruel, and inexcusable (even though I do empathize with his hurt feelings). But imagine if he had wanted Cordelia to love him forever, if the love spell had worked and was permanent, that he slept with her, married her, spent his life with her, all while her feelings for him weren’t real. A temporary love spell for the purpose of revenge is stupid and malicious, but a permanent love spell inspired by ‘pure’ intentions is a much, much bigger violation of consent and autonomy. Yet the second of the two would be considered more ‘romantic’ in our society.”

Episode 2.20, “Go Fish”: Buffy is offered as a “prize” to the members of the school’s swim team.


Buffy worries more for her reputation than her safety

“This episode has a lot of victim-blaming and slut-shaming. Buffy is the one who is attacked, but she’s blamed for dressing inappropriately. She defended herself–something that assault victims are always encouraged to do–but only further incriminates herself in the process. Sure, Cameron does have a broken nose, and Buffy doesn’t appear to be injured, but his word is automatically taken over hers. He’s worth more to the school administration. He’s a successful athlete who brings acclaim and honor to the school, and she’s a violent troublemaker. Buffy’s not the ‘right’ kind of victim.”

After analyzing this batch of episodes from the first two seasons, I noticed a few common threads.

1. In two cases, Xander is an “accidental” predator. The circumstances in “The Pack” were truly not Xander’s fault, as he never intended to become possessed by a hyena. The love spell in “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” on the other hand, was entirely his doing, even though he did not intend to use the spell to violate anyone’s physical consent.

2. Buffy was a victim or intended victim in most of the episodes. She was a target of Xander’s hyena-possessed lust, chosen to be a human sacrifice, offered up to the swim team as a prize, and the first girl to fall under Xander’s love spell. The strongest girl in the world still faces victimization whenever she turns around.

What are the implications when one of the main male characters (and one of Buffy’s best friends) is shown to be an “accidental” predator? And what are the implications when our protagonist, a butt-kicking young woman, is a common target for misogynistic attacks?

(Hint: these questions are open-ended for a reason, kids. Give your answers in the comments. Extra credit to those who show their work!)

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a screenplay, 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.

Gender and Food Week: Eclairried Away: Is it Love or Sugar Shock in ‘Simply Irresistible’?

Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible

Guest post written by Carleen Tibbetts.

The 1999 romantic comedy Simply Irresistible begins with the female lead, Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar), milling around a New York City farmer’s market (decked out in Todd Oldham! So 90’s!) searching for ingredients for what she believes is the last service at her restaurant, Southern Cross. A mysterious shaman in the guise of a market vendor convinces Amanda to buy a basket of crabs (totally legit), one of which scampers away and leads her to painfully handsome department store executive Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Tom is in charge of a new restaurant venture opening in Henri Bendel’s. Flustered, smitten, and clearly playing into the “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” cliché, as Tom is leaving, Amanda tells him she can cook Crab Napoleon. If this is starting to sound improbable, here’s the trailer:

However, we quickly learn that Amanda’s a bit of a culinary flop. She’s struggling to hold onto her late mother’s restaurant whose only patrons are an elderly married couple and a man who brings his own sack lunch every day. Amanda’s wrestling with her own professional and personal inadequacies: she’s losing the family restaurant, she will never be the caliber of cook her mother was, she’s failed as a daughter, she’s failed herself, etc. At least she’s failing wearing Todd Oldham, right? Is that where the restaurant’s rent checks have been going?

After breaking the news of the restaurant’s last service to her loyal regulars, Amanda goes outside for a cry. As fate would have it, a taxi (driven by this mysterious spirit guide from the farmer’s market…) pulls up in front of the restaurant and out tumbles Tom Bartlett and his high-class girlfriend (Amanda Peet). Fate has literally dropped Tom on Amanda’s doorstep and given her the chance to prove herself as a cook and girlfriend material. Or whatever. Amanda begins to panic, realizing that she has no idea what goes into the Crab Napoleon Tom orders. Her sioux chef cooks all the crabs with the exception of special, all-knowing crab that led Amanda to Tom earlier. This crab hears Amanda’s pleas for success, and things start to turn around. Right . . .

While making the Crab Napoleon, Amanda wishes for everything to come together so that one bite is ecstasy. She asks her chef if he’s noticed all the words there are to describe something delicious: savory, tasty, scrumptious, delectable, mouthwatering (all of which are also used to describe a woman’s attractiveness) and then after she’s done listing these, the Crab Napoleon, done to perfection, suddenly materializes on the plate (No kitchen cleanup required! Thanks, magic crab for making me talented! There’s no way I had the self-esteem to pull this off solo!). Amanda refers to this woman as “the mistake” Tom is with, but the male chef comments that the woman is perfect, with skin “like butter” (the lines between culinary and sexual ecstasy get quite blurred throughout this film), and Amanda is convinced this Barbie-esque woman isn’t right for Tom.

Let’s backtrack a minute. Tom’s no saint. He takes his Barbie to lunch for date number four, the date on which he routinely dumps every woman he dates (after the third date, which suggests they’ve slept together). Also, very classy to dump someone over a meal in a public place where he assumes she won’t cause a scene, right? Pre-lunch, Tom tells his assistant, Lois (Patricia Clarkson) how everything seems to turn sour after the third date. Women start to get clingy and expect things. His flavor-of-the-week wants more, and it makes him uneasy. He even drafts a “happiness chart” demonstrating how things taper off and fizzle after the conjugal third date (how much time does a restaurant exec for a high-end department store have on his hands?). Lois turns the curse of the fourth date around on Tom and asks him what role his behavior plays as the relationship fizzles. Tom has commitment issues. Big surprise. But, back to lunch . . .

Simply Irresistible

Upon eating Amanda’s Crab Napoleon, Tom blisses out. He completely forgets about breaking up with his Barbie. Instead, the Barbie tells Tom she’s too perfect for him, and proceeds to trash Amanda’s restaurant. Amanda needs new plates, and Tom is single again. Amanda dresses up and heads uptown to Henri Bendel to pick out new place settings with a box of éclairs in hand, because she believes “dessert is the whole point of the meal.” Tom eats one of the éclairs, feeding bites of it to Amanda, and what ensues is some hallucinatory, mutually orgasmic sexual fantasy in which he shows her the space for the store’s new restaurant and they dance. Or, they think they danced . . .

Amanda’s cooking has gone from abysmal to five-star. She’s thinking positively about her chosen profession. The restaurant is thriving. The place is hopping. She’s a success. She’s a genius. She’s a successful businesswoman. She done her momma proud. She’s a sister doing it for herself. BUT WAIT, SHE’S SINGLE AND THUS INCOMPLETE!

Amanda falls into that mind game abyss and tries to decode Tom’s behavior, fretting over why he hasn’t called since their sugary rendezvous. She call and invites to cook him dinner after she’s closed up shop for the night. He comes up with some lamely vague “I’m busy” excuse but wants to come by later. As in LATER. Clearly a booty call. Don’t be a doormat, Amanda! He shows up with flowers, and she cooks him dessert using the vanilla orchid he brings her. In what must be the most ridiculous scene, even in a film remotely dealing with the supernatural, some otherworldly fog boils out of the dessert cauldron and envelops them. He licks her skin, tells her she tastes good, and they disappear under what looks like dry ice covering the entire restaurant.

At this point, Tom is craving Amanda, or is it her food he’s after? He has some sort of post-coital glow after eating her baked goods. He begins to panic, wonders what has come over him, and when next he sees her, they float as they’re making out. The dizzying love-rush feelings freak Tom out, he feels trapped, pinned (literally, to the ceiling) and accuses Amanda of witchcraft. Confronted with commitment and serious feelings, Tom bails.

Simply Irresistible

Meanwhile, the French chef decides to walk out before the restaurant at Henri Bendel opens. At the request of his boss, Jonathan (the ever-creepy Dylan Baker), Tom grudgingly asks Amanda to fill in. Jonathan and Lois have also fallen into lust together after Lois literally shoved Amanda’s treats down his throat, and Jonathan wants this venture to be a success.

Amanda manages to shove aside all her neuroses and hang-ups about her talent, or lack thereof, and commandeers a successful multi-course meal as Henri Bendel’s lead chef. Amanda’s emotions are fused into her cooking, and all the patrons travel her peaks and valleys with each course that is served. Tom refrains from eating her food, both out of nervousness for the restaurant’s success, and to test whether or not his feelings for Amanda stemmed from her food.

Tom realizes he’s an emotional infant. How does he win her back? With diamonds and a dress, duh! He leaves a tiara and a pink dress on a Bendel mannequin with a “wear me” note. They dance, for real this time, in the restaurant where Amanda is now chef supreme. She got the notoriety. She tamed a renowned lady-killer. She got the man. She got the fairytale ending. What will become of Southern Cross? Of Amanda and Tom? Of the mystical crab? Who knows, we’re all to busy riding the sugar high to care about anything beyond the ephemeral.

Simply Irresistible

Simply Irresistible both perpetuates and slays gender stereotypes surrounding food, cooking, sex, and their interconnectedness. Sure, Amanda becomes a capable, self-assured cook capable of holding her own in a traditionally male-dominated profession, but was it because she was truly talented or because Tom got her the gig? Why is food (especially baking) almost always used as an aphrodisiac when a woman “seduces” a man and not vice-versa? Why does Lois deliberately set out to entrap Jonathan with Amanda’s desserts? Would he have been interested in her at all otherwise? Would Amanda have had the strength to stay clear of Tom after his man-child temper tantrum?

So much importance is still placed on whether or not a woman can cook, and no matter how enlightened we think we are, a woman who isn’t successful at the whole domestic bit isn’t as desired. Look at all the ads that deal with cooking and cleaning. The vast majority of TV and print ads are still targeted toward women! In 2012! Granted, this is not the Cold-War-Have-a-Martini-in-Hand-For-Your-Husband-When-He-Gets-Home-From-Work-Era, but mothers who work are still expected to shop, cook, and clean up after it all. We can’t all be Nigella Lawsons, but we shouldn’t have to be beautiful baked goods goddesses to be “complete.” As women, we need to follow our passions and creativity and not get caught up in the notion that emotional fulfillment and validation come from whether or not we’re single. Amanda should have thrown that tiara in Tom’s face, handed him a box of her desserts, and told him to get bent.

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Carleen Tibbetts lives in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, , and other publications.

Gender & Food Week: ‘Simply Irresistible’

Guest post written by Janyce Denise Glasper.

Simply Irresistible was one forgotten film of the late 90’s. It’s bewitching story failed to spark box office or critical praise thanks to a weak script dropping many unexplained plot points — who the heck was Gene O’ Reily, why did Amanda buy expensive crabs from him, and what was up with the freaking animated crab?

And those were just the introduction problems. However, let’s forget about all that for a moment and talk about food romance.

At the film’s beginning, handed down the reins and lacking the expertise that her deceased mother had to make the restaurant Southern Cross thrive, Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a terrible chef (or in her words “shitty”) and because of that, the financially troubled restaurant will be closing.

Enter Harry Bendel’s savvy businessman Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Earlier introduced to Amanda by the strange Gene O’Reily who also moonlights as a taxi cab driver, Tom and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Chris (Amanda Peet) are unceremoniously dropped off at the Southern Cross.

Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible

When he comes into the restaurant with the crisply dressed, superior quality female, suddenly jealous Amanda’s cooking skills come out to play. With the snap of a whip, she has the ability of a kitchen ninja making a fantastic crab napoleon and chicken paillard for the couple on her first try.

To the sounds of jazz and upbeat pop, soon after Tom’s visit and success at crafting a pleasant meal, Amanda looks very happy, bursting out deliciously appealing cuisine that have nothing to do with southern comfort. That “old black magic” is supposedly the reason for Amanda’s glory as the newly hopping restaurant has boasting customers shuffling in and out, possibly by word of mouth, claiming that she makes exceptional food.

Amanda thinks otherwise.

Tom, the commitment phobic rich man, is much too practical and considers dating a business deal, often relating the two together in a creepily obsessive manner. He takes an immediate shining to Amanda, complimenting that crab napoleon, but the magic starts to wear off fast.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Tom (Sean Patrick Flanery) in Simply Irresistible

For as Amanda and Tom discover each other in a magical way — imaginary dancing on a striped ballroom floor high on caramel éclairs, sharing kisses on a vanilla fogged ground, and unpeeling oranges that cause floating up to ceilings — she is stuck on him, he is bothered by it, dumps her, and she doesn’t take the “breakup” too well. In other words, she feels that he is responsible for her sudden rise to culinary fame. “I don’t know if I need you to keep that feeling,” she says wretchedly, desperate to keep him around.

The worst way to upset the female audience is to imply that a woman needed a man. Unless Judith Roberts is the new masculine name, I didn’t understand why the screenwriter had Amanda clinging to Tom in an almost sickening manner. She isn’t given an opportunity to truly relish in her food joy because she is constantly thinking about Tom. Yes, the viewers are aware that before Tom she lacked kitchen talent, but wouldn’t it have been far more amusing if Amanda’s bad cooking was just a mental barrier from her realizing her potential stemmed from trying to live up her mother’s expectations? Why else was her mother mentioned much, but not fully illustrated?

But no. Tom is the reason Amanda can cook.

That is what we and the two of them are supposed to get. If Tom left, Amanda’s passion would dwindle away and the Southern Cross would be back up on the reality market. Sadly enough, Amanda doesn’t have any female friends or a motherly figure to socialize with. Often she asks her sous chef, Nolan (Larry Gilliard Jr.) for advice, especially when it came to her relationship with Tom and that became a problem. Nolan didn’t even believe in her talents after the first meal, jokingly stating that she should stick with making sugar cookies.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible

Oh, it was a beautiful sentiment that whatever feelings Amanda possessed came right into her food and emerged into other people — to the “simple” chicken paillard that had Chris acting like a crazy dish breaking diva to the sexually charged caramel éclairs that had everyone at Bendel’s acting on suppressed sensual impulses. However, towards the ending when she receives the offer of a lifetime cooking up a storm for the influential and the rich, she brings more emotional turmoil to the menu that gets to be a quite bizarre.

Would anyone want someone drowning out their tears into their food? Highly doubt that. It wouldn’t be considered sanitary.

As far as performances go, Gellar had a few gem worthy moments, but lacked a certain charismatic chemistry with Flanery, but the witty Patricia Clarkson presented a real scene treat that kept this film from being complete fluffy fodder.

Lois (Patricia Clarkson) in Simply Irresistible

Her supporting character, Lois, a feisty woman pining lustily after Bendel heir Jonathan (Dylan Baker), stole the show and Tom’s box of Amanda’s famous éclairs that he himself had snatched away from an old lady. In this hilarious scene, she relishes her thievery. “Gotta learn to share Tom,” she chirps, devouring the stolen dessert and moaning her pleasure while Tom is left to lick caramel residue from the empty box.

If Clarkson had more scenes with Gellar, Lois would have certainly been a beneficial female companion to naïve Amanda. It seems like the most important element of the film is that Tom’s confidante be a woman and that Amanda’s advisor be a male.

Though Simply Irresistible leaves on a clichéd note and more silly goofiness — like are we supposed to believe that a girl could have her makeup and hair done after hours? — it still serves up a dish of possibilities. Certainly not the best of the romantic genre nor the worst, this film’s minute charm and cheesiness is the stuff greasy pizza is made of.

Well, if women consumed pizza with their chick flick watching that is.

———-

Janyce Denise Glasper is a writer/artist running two silly blogs of creative adventures called Sugarygingersnap and AfroVeganChick. She enjoys good female centric film, cute rubber duckies, chocolate covered everything (except bugs!), Days of Our Lives, and slaying nightly demons Buffy style in Dayton, Ohio.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Death Is Your Gift–In Praise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Fifth Season

This piece by Adam Howard previously appeared at his Web site The Blank Projector and is cross-posted with permission.

Buffy, jumping off the ledge in Season Five

I don’t intend to write about TV too often here, as the volume of serious television criticism on the internet is close to saturation point and I’m not sure what I could bring to the table. However, I’ve decided to to briefly diverge from my usual film-talk to champion a TV series that ended nine years ago and has such a huge cult following that no one really needs to talk about it anymore. When people talk about great seasons of US drama you tend to get the usual suspects time and time again: season one of The Sopranos, season two of Deadwood, season three of Breaking Bad, season four of The Wire, etc. One television season that I rarely see standing alongside those giants, though, season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

There are plenty of reasons why Buffy doesn’t often get recognised as the masterpiece of a show that it was. All the really great television series of the last fifteen years or so have been serious, downright worthy affairs and critics have taken them very seriously in turn. Buffy took itself very seriously indeed too, but there was always a deliberate, inherent silliness in its central premise that turns many people off before they even give it a chance. Furthermore, my belief that it’s one of the greatest shows of all time doesn’t mean I’m not fully aware that it has its fair share of dud episodes – such is the curse of the 22 episode season and the way the show figured itself out as it went along.

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.

Take, for example, season five’s biggest plot contrivance – Dawn’s sudden appearance as Buffy’s sister. She’s never been mentioned or seen before, everyone’s acting as if he’s been there all along, and aside from one crazy tramp seething at her that she doesn’t belong here, we the audience aren’t given many clues as to who or what she is for six entire episodes. When we do find out what she is – a mystical key sent to Buffy and her friends to protect, complete with fabricated memories so she’d love her deeply like a sister – it doesn’t come easy, and doesn’t make things any less complicated. Many people call Dawn the albatross of the season, but while her character becomes much more problematic later on the series’ run, I think she works beautifully in this season. Moments like the one where Joyce realises what Dawn is and loves her anyway, or when Buffy talks to her about how they share the same blood, are some of the most beautifully drawn and tender moments the series ever produced, and if she hadn’t been there the show would have been drained of all its agency.

If I was going to pin the blame on any character for dragging down the season in its early episodes, it would be Riley. From the outset of the season it’s clear that the writers don’t really know what to do with him now that the Initiative business from Season Four is done and dusted, but they take an awfully long time to get rid of him. I’m sure that the plotline in which his insecurities at no longer being a superman lead to him going to some kind of vampire sucking den for cheap thrills looked good on paper, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in a season that’s otherwise thematically harmonious. In a season that’s more about confronting the hard-edged reality that our heroes ignore by fighting monsters, this slightly hysterical flight-of-fancy just doesn’t work.

That’s a small quibble, though, when you’re faced with a season of television that’s otherwise so thematically rich and intricate. All the themes and motifs of the series – family, power, blood, death, the toll being a slayer takes on Buffy’s loved ones – all bounce off one another in constantly fascinating ways.

Take, for example, the season opener, “Buffy vs. Dracula.” At first glance it’s a fun, punchy, exciting opening to the season, but in retrospect it kicks into gear a lot of what season five is trying to do. To begin with, there’s a renewed focus on Buffy’s blood as something powerful and life-giving, an idea that is teased throughout the season but doesn’t come to fruition till its final moments. Most importantly though, it ups the stakes and deepens the mythology significantly. Season Four’s closer “Restless” did a great job of connecting the slayer to a deep and ancient power, but it’s in “Buffy vs. Dracula” that she sets out to learn what that means, tasting the darker side of her power and asking Giles to help her harness it.

Perhaps that’s why this season feels so different to what came before it. Everything feels grander, more important, like the writers are making the show they’ve been preparing for all this time. They have more confidence than ever in the story they want to tell – early on in the season they drop the college as the show’s hub, instead centering on Buffy’s two families: her mother and sister at home, and her friends at the Magic Shop. It results in the season being far more streamlined and the overarching plot having far more prominence – there are few episodes that have no connection to what’s going on with Glory and Dawn, and even the most inconsequential-seeming episodes – “Triangle” and “I Was Made to Love You” – have things in them that become important later. Many people miss the one-off, monster-of-the-week aspect of the show from season five onwards, but I always found that Buffy worked best when it was dealing with more long-form, character-based storytelling, and season five’s arc has to be its strongest.

Willow and Tara sharing their first kiss in Season Five

Not that some of the individual episodes aren’t fantastic in their own right. An early standout is the Joss Whedon penned and directed “Family,” that is in some ways the whole season in microcosm. Tara’s family (including a young Amy Adams!) comes looking for her, insisting that once she turns eighteen she’ll turn into a demon and only they can look after her. Not only does Tara’s using magic turn into a graceful metaphor for her lesbianism, it also lays out the main theme of the season – hell, it’s right there in the title. Early in the episode, Buffy and Xander talk about how they don’t know what to get Tara for her birthday, how they like her, but don’t know her that well or really ‘get’ her. But at the end of the episode, when her father says to Buffy, “We are her blood kin. Who the hell are you?” she replies “We’re family.” It’s not the people who you share a surname with or even the people you love deeply that are your family, but the people who you choose to care about and embrace as part of your life. All Joss Whedon shows and films are about people forming ad-hoc families to overcome obstacles in one way or another, but never is it clearer, or more affecting than here.

And then there’s “The Body.” To say that “The Body” is a great episode of television would be an understatement. It’s one of the most ambitious, devastating, daring and powerful things ever committed to the small screen, saying more about death and grief in one episode than Six Feet Under managed in its entire run and looking and feeling unlike anything I’ve ever seen before or since – including any other episode of Buffy. Using no non-diagetic music and limiting each act to just one scene, Whedon tracks Buffy’s loss of her mother with stark, hyper-realist immediacy. People are quick to criticise Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting ability, but she does great work here, and her journey from blind panic and fear to numb, empty grief is devastating to watch. So many tiny moments stand out from the episode’s first act alone – Buffy rearranging her mother’s skirt before the paramedics enter; the strange, unclear way she says “She’s at the house” to Giles on the phone; the moment when she opens her backdoor and peers out into bright sunlight and the world still going on outside – but the episode’s best moment is the scene where Buffy’s friends each go through their own grief. Willow frets about what clothes she should wear while Tara comforts her (with what was their first on-screen kiss despite them having been a couple for over a year), Xander punches a hole through the wall, and Anya asks a lot of questions. Anya’s recently-mortal status has been a bottomless well of comedy since she became a regular cast member, but here she surprises everyone and gives a speech that’s unbearably sad: “She’ll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why.” The gang have faced all kinds of insurmountable odds, but when faced with the cold hard reality of death, none of them has the answers.

Anya in tears after the death of Joyce

The best thing about “The Body,” and the thing that shows how far Buffy had come by this point, is how it trusts its characters and its writing enough to abandon its central premise. There is a vampire in “The Body,” but only one, and while it’s a dirty, naked struggle of a fight, he’s not a real threat. By now, the characters are so strong that they can stand on their own, and that’s what makes this season so powerful. Whedon’s character writing has never been particularly psychologically complex, but he’s a genius when it comes to writing broad, instantly recognisable characters that are easy to understand and easy to care about, that grow and develop and feel like real humans. That’s why season five works so well – it makes you care. The final four or five episodes are some of the most emotionally involving television ever made, from Tara’s brain being sucked out, to Spike telling Buffy she makes him feel like a man, to Xander proposing to Anya, to Buffy’s quiet, resigned talk with Giles where she confesses how much she misses her mum. The season’s climax is also the the series’ climax – Whedon et. al. had intended to finish the series here, and regardless of whether you feel they should have continued or not (I for one think there’s enough interesting stuff going on in Seasons 6 and 7 to justify their existence), it’s hard to argue against Buffy’s sacrifice being the defining moment of the series.

So, while conventional wisdom will cast season 3 as Buffy’s finest year, and many will cite Season 2’s Angel-turns-evil plotline as the show’s most operatic, emotional arc, I respectfully disagree. Season 3 is terrific fun, and Angel’s transformation is as sensational and rewarding a plot twist as they come, but Season 5 has both four years of history behind it and a committed drive to produce something more daring and ambitious than ever before. Its influence is still being felt now: without Buffy, there’d be no Lost, no 24, no new Doctor Who, and yet none of its many protégées has ever come close to the emotional gut-punch of Buffy jumping off that ledge. If you’re ever left wondering why Buffy the Vampire Slayer has such a huge cult following a decade later; if you’re baffled by why someone would bother to write 2,000 words about it in 2012; mark my words: you are missing out.

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Adam Howard is a 25-year-old Londoner who writes about movies at The Blank Projector. You can follow him on twitter @afahoward.

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).