Tag: Television

Ross and Rachel’s Caustic Rom-Com Conventions

Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) after the infamous drunk-dial

I recently indulged in some Friends-related nostalgia with a good pal of mine over a rainy weekend. We took fifteen episodes over two days and I was reminded why I was obsessed with this show during my first two years in high school. I loved Chandler, Lisa Kudrow, the chemistry among the cast members, Chandler, the way the show made typical sitcom cliches seem original and funny, the “comfort food” nature of the show, and Chandler. 

One thing I did NOT love was the aspect of Friends that most people were obsessed with: the on-again, off-again relationship of the TV sitcom supercouple, Ross and Rachel.

I’ve spent some time looking at different romantic comedies and the cliches that are used and re-used in cookie-cutter scripts, and I finally pinpointed the reason why Ross and Rachel always bothered me as a couple: over ten years (seriously, ten years!) of a will-they-or-won’t-they relationship, they managed to cover almost every single one of my least favorite rom-com cliches.

“WE WERE ON A BREAK!” in five, four, three…

He loves her. She’s oblivious until he’s with someone else, and then he’s oblivious. In the pilot episode of the series, Ross tells Rachel that he had a crush on her since high school, and she admits that she already knew. He asks her if he could ask her out sometime, and she seems receptive to the idea, and it’s a cute moment between them.

But we can’t have something as simple as a man asking out a woman in episode two, her saying yes, and seeing the two of them date over time and eventually fall in love, now can we? No, we must insert drama and other complications. In this case, this drama results in Rachel conveniently forgetting that Ross liked her and becoming completely oblivious while he mooned after her for an entire season, making her look stupid and unobservant and him look pathetic. When she re-learns that he has a crush on her, she decides that she likes him too, but whoops – he’s moved onto someone else, and now, instead of a season of Ross whining, we’re treated to six episodes of Rachel being jealous and bratty to his new girlfriend.

When Ross is pining for Rachel, he’s a whiner. When Rachel is pining for Ross, she’s a jealous brat. Why am I supposed to root for them to get together?

Rachel hangs up the phone while Ross is talking to Julie

“We’re still in love (during season premieres and season finales).” Unfortunately, this “we only like each other when we’re with other people” trend doesn’t end after the second season. Ross and Rachel finally date, and then they break up, and then Rachel realizes that she’s still in love with Ross when he moves onto Phoebe’s friend Bonnie. Then she realizes she’s still in love with Ross, again, at the end of the fourth season and runs off to ruin his wedding. She tells him she still loves him at the beginning of season five, but then gets over it for some reason. Then they get married in Las Vegas at the end of the fifth season, and Ross doesn’t annul the marriage because it’s implied that he still has feelings for Rachel, but then conveniently forgets about those renewed feelings at around episode six. Then they have a baby together at the end of season eight, and they consider getting back together at the beginning of season nine, but that desire is forgotten by episode two.

Is there something about the months of May and September that make Ross and Rachel fall back in love? Or is there something wrong with my suspension of disbelief, as I simply don’t buy that the same two people can fall in and out of love with each other that many times? 

They had a KID together. A KID. And still didn’t get back together for two stinking years.

Jealousy is romantic. The worst thing that Ross ever did in his relationship with Rachel was become a jealous, possessive jerk after she got a new job. (I consider that worse than his sleeping with the copy-shop girl when he and Rachel “were on a break”). The worst thing that Rachel ever did in her relationship with Ross was run off to England to stop his wedding even though he had happily moved on to someone else.

To be fair, Friends was initially honest about these issues and showed why the characters were in the wrong. Monica criticized Ross for being jealous, and his inability to get over his jealousy cost him his relationship with Rachel. Phoebe (and Hugh Laurie, in a great guest appearance) criticized Rachel for being selfish and wanting to end Ross’s wedding.

But then Ross says Rachel’s name at the altar. And at the end of the series, Rachel chooses Ross over a great new career opportunity in Paris with no apparent job to fall back on.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that Ross lost Rachel when he was jealous, or that Rachel realized it was wrong to break up his wedding. In the end, Ross wins Rachel over her career, and Rachel gets to be with Ross instead of watching him marry someone else. Getting them together in the end seems to retroactively reward them for their previous bad behavior, justifying their actions as okay because they were really in love the whole time!

Ross is jealous. This is a natural state of his.

“Uh-oh. The placeholder love interest is more likable than the endgame couple. I know – we’ll turn them into jerks!” I can’t be the only one who thought Emily was a much better match for Ross than Rachel was. Ross and Emily had more in common than Ross and Rachel and he was more likable when he was around Emily – more genuinely romantic, more energetic, and she seemed to appreciate his geeky side more than Rachel did.

This was not a good thing for the Friends writers, apparently. Ross and Rachel were meant to be the endgame couple no matter what. The only thing to nip the Ross/Emily relationship in the bud was to turn Emily into a jerk who made him stay away from Rachel and move out of his apartment.

Rachel watches Ross and Emily (Helen Baxendale)

Why did they like each other, anyway? What did Ross and Rachel have in common, aside from being two decent human beings who have the same friends? He had no respect or interest in her career and she had no respect or interest in his. He thought she was selfish and spoiled and she thought he was a geek and an intellectual snob. Yes, opposites sometimes attract, but sometimes I didn’t know why they even liked each other, much less loved each other.

Ross in his tiny T-shirt.

The chase to the airport. They actually had a chase to the airport in the last episode. I mean, really?

“Oh, wait a minute,” you might be saying. “You’re telling me that you weren’t moved by the last scene where they got back together for real?”

Well, of course I was moved. I’m not made of stone, people. She got off the plane!

Yes, I “aww” and I tear up at their last scene together, as ridiculous as it is. To me, that’s a testament to how much Schwimmer and Aniston sold every step of the relationship. No matter how contrived the writing was, they committed to those romantic moments. Sometimes they made me forget how much their relationship got on my nerves. But when I’m re-watching old Friends episodes and indulging in some nostalgia, I tend to fast-forward the dramatic Ross and Rachel scenes, because those are too many cliches for me to handle with one couple.

Chandler and Monica, on the other hand – that’s where the magic was.

They got together – and STAYED together – with very little bullshit! How refreshing.

Lady T is a writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

Ross and Rachel’s Caustic Rom-Com Conventions

Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) after the infamous drunk-dial

I recently indulged in some Friends-related nostalgia with a good pal of mine over a rainy weekend. We took fifteen episodes over two days and I was reminded why I was obsessed with this show during my first two years in high school. I loved Chandler, Lisa Kudrow, the chemistry among the cast members, Chandler, the way the show made typical sitcom cliches seem original and funny, the “comfort food” nature of the show, and Chandler. 

One thing I did NOT love was the aspect of Friends that most people were obsessed with: the on-again, off-again relationship of the TV sitcom supercouple, Ross and Rachel.

I’ve spent some time looking at different romantic comedies and the cliches that are used and re-used in cookie-cutter scripts, and I finally pinpointed the reason why Ross and Rachel always bothered me as a couple: over ten years (seriously, ten years!) of a will-they-or-won’t-they relationship, they managed to cover almost every single one of my least favorite rom-com cliches.

“WE WERE ON A BREAK!” in five, four, three…

He loves her. She’s oblivious until he’s with someone else, and then he’s oblivious. In the pilot episode of the series, Ross tells Rachel that he had a crush on her since high school, and she admits that she already knew. He asks her if he could ask her out sometime, and she seems receptive to the idea, and it’s a cute moment between them.

But we can’t have something as simple as a man asking out a woman in episode two, her saying yes, and seeing the two of them date over time and eventually fall in love, now can we? No, we must insert drama and other complications. In this case, this drama results in Rachel conveniently forgetting that Ross liked her and becoming completely oblivious while he mooned after her for an entire season, making her look stupid and unobservant and him look pathetic. When she re-learns that he has a crush on her, she decides that she likes him too, but whoops – he’s moved onto someone else, and now, instead of a season of Ross whining, we’re treated to six episodes of Rachel being jealous and bratty to his new girlfriend.

When Ross is pining for Rachel, he’s a whiner. When Rachel is pining for Ross, she’s a jealous brat. Why am I supposed to root for them to get together?

Rachel hangs up the phone while Ross is talking to Julie

“We’re still in love (during season premieres and season finales).” Unfortunately, this “we only like each other when we’re with other people” trend doesn’t end after the second season. Ross and Rachel finally date, and then they break up, and then Rachel realizes that she’s still in love with Ross when he moves onto Phoebe’s friend Bonnie. Then she realizes she’s still in love with Ross, again, at the end of the fourth season and runs off to ruin his wedding. She tells him she still loves him at the beginning of season five, but then gets over it for some reason. Then they get married in Las Vegas at the end of the fifth season, and Ross doesn’t annul the marriage because it’s implied that he still has feelings for Rachel, but then conveniently forgets about those renewed feelings at around episode six. Then they have a baby together at the end of season eight, and they consider getting back together at the beginning of season nine, but that desire is forgotten by episode two.

Is there something about the months of May and September that make Ross and Rachel fall back in love? Or is there something wrong with my suspension of disbelief, as I simply don’t buy that the same two people can fall in and out of love with each other that many times? 

They had a KID together. A KID. And still didn’t get back together for two stinking years.

Jealousy is romantic. The worst thing that Ross ever did in his relationship with Rachel was become a jealous, possessive jerk after she got a new job. (I consider that worse than his sleeping with the copy-shop girl when he and Rachel “were on a break”). The worst thing that Rachel ever did in her relationship with Ross was run off to England to stop his wedding even though he had happily moved on to someone else.

To be fair, Friends was initially honest about these issues and showed why the characters were in the wrong. Monica criticized Ross for being jealous, and his inability to get over his jealousy cost him his relationship with Rachel. Phoebe (and Hugh Laurie, in a great guest appearance) criticized Rachel for being selfish and wanting to end Ross’s wedding.

But then Ross says Rachel’s name at the altar. And at the end of the series, Rachel chooses Ross over a great new career opportunity in Paris with no apparent job to fall back on.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that Ross lost Rachel when he was jealous, or that Rachel realized it was wrong to break up his wedding. In the end, Ross wins Rachel over her career, and Rachel gets to be with Ross instead of watching him marry someone else. Getting them together in the end seems to retroactively reward them for their previous bad behavior, justifying their actions as okay because they were really in love the whole time!

Ross is jealous. This is a natural state of his.

“Uh-oh. The placeholder love interest is more likable than the endgame couple. I know – we’ll turn them into jerks!” I can’t be the only one who thought Emily was a much better match for Ross than Rachel was. Ross and Emily had more in common than Ross and Rachel and he was more likable when he was around Emily – more genuinely romantic, more energetic, and she seemed to appreciate his geeky side more than Rachel did.

This was not a good thing for the Friends writers, apparently. Ross and Rachel were meant to be the endgame couple no matter what. The only thing to nip the Ross/Emily relationship in the bud was to turn Emily into a jerk who made him stay away from Rachel and move out of his apartment.

Rachel watches Ross and Emily (Helen Baxendale)

Why did they like each other, anyway? What did Ross and Rachel have in common, aside from being two decent human beings who have the same friends? He had no respect or interest in her career and she had no respect or interest in his. He thought she was selfish and spoiled and she thought he was a geek and an intellectual snob. Yes, opposites sometimes attract, but sometimes I didn’t know why they even liked each other, much less loved each other.

Ross in his tiny T-shirt.

The chase to the airport. They actually had a chase to the airport in the last episode. I mean, really?

“Oh, wait a minute,” you might be saying. “You’re telling me that you weren’t moved by the last scene where they got back together for real?”

Well, of course I was moved. I’m not made of stone, people. She got off the plane!

Yes, I “aww” and I tear up at their last scene together, as ridiculous as it is. To me, that’s a testament to how much Schwimmer and Aniston sold every step of the relationship. No matter how contrived the writing was, they committed to those romantic moments. Sometimes they made me forget how much their relationship got on my nerves. But when I’m re-watching old Friends episodes and indulging in some nostalgia, I tend to fast-forward the dramatic Ross and Rachel scenes, because those are too many cliches for me to handle with one couple.

Chandler and Monica, on the other hand – that’s where the magic was.

They got together – and STAYED together – with very little bullshit! How refreshing.

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

‘Gravity Falls’: Manliness, Silliness, and a Whole Lot of Awesome

I am too old for the Disney Channel. The bright candy colors, the rapid-fire pacing, the saccharine music and headache-y flash-cuts and forced zaniness – it all adds up to one massively hyperstimulating, sugar-coated migraine. Half an hour of all that on a Saturday morning and I am ready to bounce off the ceiling before crashing to earth semi-comatose for the rest of the day.
If you can overcome (or, better, avoid entirely) the excruciating commercials and the overstimulation of the Disney Channel milieu, however, you can experience maybe the most exciting television debut of 2012. (Not, I’ll admit, that the upcoming fall season looks to offer stiff competition.)
Welcome to Gravity Falls.
In the nine episodes aired so far, Gravity Falls has already established a pretty dense mythology for itself, jam-packed with occult imagery, cryptograms, conspiracies, clever callbacks, and hidden Easter eggs (and there are already plentyof websitesdevoted to deciphering this stuff). It’s an enormously fun show, chronicling the supernatural adventures of twelve-year-old twins Dipper and Mabel in the creepy, not-quite-right town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. The level of care and detail lavished on the world-building is matched by the depth and – if I can say this of an animated Disney Channel show – realism of the characters.
Dipper and Mabel, voice by Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal, are wonderfully characterized as not just siblings but true friends: despite their personality differences, they enjoy spending time together, and although they needle and mock each other they always have each other’s back. As somebody whose siblings are my best friends, I find it rings very true to life, and the only other show I can think of with a comparably close sibling dynamic is Bob’s Burgers –where, coincidentally, one of the siblings is also voiced by Schaal.
The twins’ age is a savvy writing choice that allows for some spot-on exploration of themes of growing up, pitching the show niftily at the crossover-hit sweet spot for both younger and older viewers. A grown-up trying to convince other grown-ups to watch a Disney Channel animated show can certainly relate to the twins’ swithering between the childish excitement of their supernatural adventures and their desire to prove themselves cool enough for the local teenagers (including Dipper’s hopeless and completely understandable crush, Linda Cardellini-voiced Wendy). Two specific episodes of Gravity Falls work well as companion pieces exploring Dipper and Mabel’s respective struggles to establish their identities.
Episode 6, “Dipper Vs. Manliness”
A cutie patootie.
Dipper is the more introspective, bookish twin – as Mabel puts it, he’s “not exactly Manly Mannington.” When an old “manliness tester” machine at the local diner declares him “a cutie patootie,” Dipper’s insecurity about being a man goes into overdrive, and he seeks training in the ways of manliness from a group of Manotaurs (“half man, half… taur!” “I have 3 Y-chromosomes, 6 Adam’s apples, pecs on my abs, and fists for nipples!”).
Anyone who’s been a feminist longer than five minutes knows that the enforcement of gender roles harms men as well as women, and this episode features a lot of great jokes lampooning the sheer absurdity of what’s considered manly in our society: the pack of REAL MAN JERKY emblazoned with the slogan YOU’RE INADEQUATE!, the Manotaur council that involves beating the crap out of each other, Dipper convincing the reluctant Manotaurs to help him (“using some sort of brain magic!”) by suggesting they’re not manly enough to do it.
In the end, it’s Dipper’s love for a thinly-veiled “Dancing Queen” pastiche that causes him to defy the Manotaurs’ stereotypical definition of manliness. His enjoyment of something considered “girly” opens his eyes to the nonsensical restrictiveness of traditional gender roles. As he says in his climactic speech to the Manotaurs: “You keep telling me that being a man means doing all these tasks and being aggro all the time, but I’m starting to think that stuff’s malarkey. You heard me: malarkey!”
Rejecting the Manotaur’s version of manliness does not, however, answer Dipper’s agonized question about the nature of masculinity: “Is it mental? Is it physical? What’s the secret?” (And how many times have I myself asked that question?) Although the episode puts a neat bow on Dipper’s arc by offering a pat moral – “You did what was right even though no one agreed with you. Sounds pretty manly to me” – it’s made fairly clear that masculinity and femininity do not have to be discrete, oppositional spheres rooted in stereotypes, and the question of what makes a man is left open – as, perhaps, it should be.
Episode 8, “Irrational Treasure”
Mabel is the best. She’s my favorite character, and with every episode I love her even more. Her quest for self in “Irrational Treasure” is not a direct counterpart to Dipper’s search for manliness – Mabel is pretty comfortable with both the ways in which she is conventionally feminine and the ways in which she is not (reflecting the sad reality that girls’ freedom to express masculinity is not mirrored by an equivalent freedom for boys to express femininity). In the show’s fourth episode, “The Hand That Rocks the Mabel,” she confronts the societal pressures around dating while female, as she struggles with how to extricate herself from a coercive romantic relationship with the creepy Lil Gideon – an object lesson in how messed up are our society’s ideas of the romantic pursuit of uninterested women by persistent men – but in this episode she faces a less explicitly gendered problem: how to convince everyone that she’s not silly.
The delightfully goofy hijinks of this episode – involving a conspiracy to cover up the existence of Quentin Trembley, the peanut-brittle-preserved eighth-and-a-half president of the United States – are propelled by Mabel’s quest to prove her seriousness to rival Pacifica Northwest. Pacifica is a pretty stereotypical stuck-up-rich-mean-girl archetype thus far, but it seems distinctly possible that an interesting character arc could await her in future. “You look and act ridiculous,” she tells Mabel with scorn, and Mabel takes her peer’s cruelty to heart the way only a pre-teen can. “I thought I was being charming,” she says dejectedly, “but I guess people see me as a big joke.”
Don’t worry Mabel, you really are so so charming.
As it was Dipper’s non-manliness that ultimately proved him a real man, so it’s Mabel’s silliness that saves the day here, allowing her to crack all the clues for the conspiracy and help President Trembley escape the local police (who, despite being called serious by Mabel, are in fact extremely silly). By the episode’s end, Mabel is impervious to Pacifica’s jibes: “I’ve got nothing to prove. I’ve learned that being silly is awesome.”
Figuring out who you are in the face of societal pressures that buffet you every which way is the trial of growing up, and helping people to do that is one of feminism’s goals. It’s also at the heart of Gravity Falls, which helps cement this for me as the most exciting new show of 2012. (Plus, it’s apparently indoctrinating kids into occult symbolism. Cool.)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme Week: The Roundup

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 1 Trailer

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

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

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

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 2 Trailer

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

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

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

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 3 Trailer

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

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

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 4 Trailer

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

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

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

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

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

Xander Harris Has Masculinity Issues by Lady T

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

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 5 Trailer

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 6 Trailer

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

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

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

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 7 Trailer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Defending Dawn Summers: From One Kid Sister to Another

Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers
In the final scene of the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Season 5, Dawn Summers, Buffy’s never before seen or heard-of little sister, appears seemingly out of nowhere. While she’s completely new to the audience, oddly, it is clear that from the characters’ perspectives that Dawn has been there all along.  
Dawn and Tara, fellow outsiders from the Scooby gang, pass time with a thumb war.
To quote my husband’s reaction as we reached season 5 during his (in-progress) Buffy indoctrination: “Why on earth are they doing this?”
Most of the Buffy fandom reacted with the same puzzlement. As Dawn’s character was fleshed out over the first few episodes of the season as the archetypical annoying little sister, the audience was still denied all but the vaguest of clues as to Dawn’s true nature and reason for being retconned into the Buffyverse.  
Dawn as annoying little sister.
It was not until the fifth episode of the season, “No Place Like Home”, that the Dawn’s existence is explained: she is a mystical key that opens gateways between dimensions, magically given human form with blood relation to the slayer, woven into her memories and all of those around her so that Buffy would protect her with her life, to keep the evil god Glory from using the Key to destroy the universe.  
Unfortunately, the only place the monks’ spell couldn’t reach was the minds of the audience, and Dawn Summers had to win us over without the benefit of false memories.  Which may have been an impossible feat, given her character is pretty much laid out as an immature, whiny, brat with a tendency to get into trouble. 
Dawn in damsel-in-distress mode.
Also, she occasionally does this thing where she piercingly shrieks “Get out, get out, GET OUT!” which ranks up there with nails on a chalkboard, dental drills, and Katy Perry songs when it comes to horrible sounds to endure:
And so it is that Dawn is one of the least-liked characters in the Buffyverse. But not by me.  I love Dawn Summers.
I suspect my unusually high tolerance for Dawn comes from my OWN memories.  In “Real Me,” the episode which properly introduces Dawn’s character, she writes in her diary/narrates: “No one understands. No one has an older sister who is the slayer.”
Dawn writes in her diary.
But I understand. OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.”  But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow.  I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys.  She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran.  Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.
And my big sister was a lot nicer to me than Buffy usually was to Dawn.  If the audience found out before Buffy did that Dawn was created to induce the slayer to protect the key, it might have been a little hard to swallow.  Buffy shows only hostile resentment toward Dawn for the first half of Season 5.  It is only after Dawn learns herself that she is new to the world that Buffy shows her true sisterly love, when she lovingly insists to Dawn that she is Buffy’s “real sister” despite her mystical origins.  
“It doesn’t matter where you came from, or how you got here, you are my sister.”
Because I relate to Dawn as a fellow annoying little brat following around her remarkable older sister, I am more forgiving of her character flaws. But I do think viewers without my background ought to take it easier on Dawn as well.  
A common criticism of Dawn is that she’s much more immature than the main characters were at the start of the series, when they were close to her in age (Dawn is introduced as a 14-year-old in the eighth grade; Buffy, Xander, and Willow were high school sophomores around age 15 or 16 in Season 1).  Writer David Fury responds to this in his DVD commentary on the episode “Real Me,” saying that Dawn was originally conceived as around age 12 and aged up a few years after Michelle Trachtenberg was cast, but it took a while for him and the other writers to get the originally-conceived younger version of the character out of their brains.  But I don’t need this excuse; I think it makes perfect narrative sense that Dawn comes across as more immature than our point-of-view characters were when they were younger.  Who among us didn’t think of themselves as being just as smart and capable as grown-ups when we were teens? Who among us, when confronted with the next generation of teenagers ten years down the line, were not horrified by their blatant immaturity?  
Additionally, Dawn starting her character arc as whiny brat lets us watch her grow and mature into a pretty awesome young woman.  It is a long road, beset by personal tragedy and a theme of abandonment: Dawn loses her mother and her sister within a matter of months in Season 5, and in Season 6 sees her surrogate parent figures Willow and Tara split up just as a returned-from-the-grave Buffy is too detached from humanity to be there emotionally for Dawn.  Throughout Season 6, Dawn acts out: lying to Buffy to stay out all night with friends, habitually and perhaps compulsively stealing, and ultimately sublimating her abandonment issues into a curse (with the help of Vengeance “Justice” Demon Halfrek), temporarily trapping the Scooby gang and some innocent bystanders in the Summers home.  
Dawn’s tantrum in Season 6’s “Older and Faraway”
But Season 6 represents an era of bad choices for almost the entire cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so Dawn should be given as much slack for her missteps as we give the other wayward characters, including Buffy herself.  And it is Dawn who finally pulls Buffy out of the emotional purgatory she is suffering in this season.  In the Season 6 finale “Grave”, Buffy finally truly regains her will to live and recaptures her complete humanity, and this epiphany comes in large part because she finally sees Dawn as a gift in her life rather than a burden:
Buffy and Dawn hug in “Grave”
“Things have really sucked lately, but that’s all gonna change—and I want to be there when it does. I want to see my friends happy again. I want to see you grow up. The woman you’re gonna become… Because she’s gonna be beautiful. And she’s gonna be powerful. I got it so wrong. I don’t want to protect you from the world—I want to show it to you. There’s so much that I wanna to show you.” –  Buffy to Dawn in “Grave.”
Dawn with Buffy during her metaphorical rebirth in “Grave.”
Dawn finds her own self-actualization in the Season 7 episode “Potential.” Having once again been shoved to the sidelines of Buffy’s attention by the arrival of a collection of young “potential slayers” who need protection from the Bringers who have been systematically wiping out the future slayer lineage.  While Buffy focuses on protecting and training the potentials, Dawn clearly feels left out, trapped by her own ordinariness and unimportance (a significant change for a girl who was once the key to the fabric between dimensions).
Dawn lurks in the background as Buffy gives a speech to potential slayers.
That all changes when a spell cast by Willow appears to identify Dawn as a potential slayer herself.  Dawn is emotionally overwhelmed by the news, mainly because she thinks it means that Buffy must die before Dawn could ever realize this potential (I’m pretty sure the next potential would be called only by the death of Faith, but that’s neither here nor there).  A part of Dawn is clearly excited by the news, and given a huge jolt of self-confidence that lets her bravely defend herself against a vampire and then fight off the group of Bringers who come for her classmate Amanda, the true potential slayer identified by Willow’s spell.  Dawn handles the news of her lack of slayer potential with perfect grace, saving Amanda’s life and transferring to her the confidence that comes with knowing you are “special.”  
At the episode’s end, Xander, the only other remaining character without any superpowers, has a heart-to-heart with Dawn.  He shares with her the wisdom he’s gained in seven years in these circumstances:
Xander has a heart-to-heart with Dawn
“They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn’t chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody’s watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You’re not special. You’re extraordinary.” – Xander to Dawn in “Potential.”

 Dawn accepts her humanity and finds her maturity.
After “Potential”, Dawn, who began life at age 14, crafted from a ball of mystical energy and a spell creating powerful false memories, is finally defined by her humanity, her normalcy.  She accepts this position with dignity, grace, and bravery.  And in so doing, Dawn also steps up to her place as a mature young adult. And at least for this one-time bratty kid sister, that makes Dawn Summers is just as heroic and inspiring a character as Buffy herself.  
—
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa.  She is a regular contributor to Bitch Flicks with a new piece appearing each Friday.  She is still upset that the Season 5 Buffy DVDs don’t include the awesome “previously on” montage from “The Gift”.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Xander Harris Has Masculinity Issues

Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), cavalry guy with a rock (not pictured: rock)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a great cast of characters that includes many flawed, admirable, psychologically complex (white) women. Two of them (Buffy and Cordelia) are some of my most beloved television characters ever. Another (Willow) fascinates me and infuriates me in equal measure. The rest of the female cast resonate more with other people than they do with me, giving a variety of watchers (as in television watchers, not the Council of Watchers, hey-o!) a large selection of women to relate to and find inspiring.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer also has Xander Harris, a character who is, perhaps, not as inspiring for a feminist viewer of the show. After all, he’s a bit of a Nice Guy. He’s slut-shamed his romantic partners and female friends. He’s been a judgmental jerk about his friends’ lives. He’s my favorite character on the show.
*record scratch* Wait, what?
Seriously? This guy?
Yes, it’s true. Despite Xander’s many flaws, despite the fact that he’s said and done a few things that have made me want to reach into the television screen and shake him a little, I still count him as my favorite of the many characters on Buffy that I love.
Some of the reasons I love Xander are obvious to anyone who knows me or has read my writing: he’s funny and a loyal friend, and I tend to be attracted to that particular character archetype (see Weasley, Ron and Gamgee, Samwise). I also love him for his bravery and the fact that he always fights the good fight despite not having any superpowers. Other reasons are less obvious, because I’m a feminist and Xander has, let’s say, issues with women – but if anything, my feminism has made me appreciate him as a character even more than when I first started watching the show.
When I look at Xander through a feminist lens, I find him fascinating because he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a would-be “man’s man” – obsessed with being manly – whose only close friends are women. He’s both a perpetrator and victim of sexual assault and/or violation of consent. He’s both attracted to and intimidated by strong women. He jokes about objectifying women and viewing sex as some sort of game, but in more intimate moments, seems to value romance and real connection. He’s a willing participant in the patriarchy and also a victim of it.
The last point is the main one I’m going to address in this post. I hesitate to wring my hands and go “what about teh menz?!” but I think deconstructing traditional masculinity is an important part of feminism, and while Buffy has excellent commentary on the way gender roles have negatively affected women, it also shows us, through Xander, how these gender roles are no picnic for men, either. 
Xander and a phallic symbol. He has a complicated relationship with these things.
Xander is a boy who struggles with his relationship with masculinity, and the source of much of this struggle can be traced back to his childhood. In the first few seasons, we’re given brief glimpses into Xander’s home life, and even though we never see his parents onscreen, what we dosee isn’t pretty. His mother doesn’t recognize his voice when he calls her at home. During the holidays, he spends his nights on the lawn in a sleeping bag to avoid his family’s drunken Christmas fights. He watches movies with Anya, Buffy, and Riley in his family’s basement as his parents fight loudly above them. When Buffy expresses shock that a villain of the week turned out to be a cruel children’s baseball coach, Xander replies, “Well, you obviously haven’t played Kiddie League. I’m surprised it wasn’t one of the parents,” showing a disturbing familiarity with the way adults can be harmful to children.
The show leaves little hints about Xander’s upbringing throughout the first four seasons, but the first time we see one of his family members is in “Restless.” During Xander’s dream sequence, he constantly finds himself returning to his parents’ basement, and we’re left with the impression that his biggest fear is to be stuck aimless, drifting from job to job, and being a loser.
Then the basement door opens, and we see the shrouded, partially obscured vision of Xander’s father. A physically imposing man, he walks down the stairs and berates Xander for being ashamed of his family. And Xander, who has fought vampires, who stared down a vicious bully with a quiet smile on his face, who has saved the lives of each one of his friends at one point or another, can’t look his father in the eye. He’s at a loss for words, offering only a weak “You don’t understand” before hearing the rest of his father’s tirade: “The line ends here with us, and you’re not gonna change that. You don’t have the heart.”
And his father reaches into Xander’s chest and pulls out his heart.
Xander and his father (Michael Harney)
Yes, the person who really ripped out Xander’s heart was the spirit of the First Slayer, but the point is clear: his father is the scariest, most threatening figure in Xander’s life. He is literally the source of Xander’s nightmares, and his speech speaks to Xander’s biggest fear: that he will never escape the cycle of abuse from his family, and that he might someday become just like his father.
Presented with an unhealthy example of abusive, aggressive male behavior throughout his life, Xander struggles with his masculinity as a teen and a young man. He doesn’t have a healthy relationship with his father, the only male authority figure he admires (Giles) mostly views him as an annoyance, and after Jesse dies in the second episode, he has no male friends.
Xander is essentially left to his own devices to construct his version of masculinity, and seems to have pieced lessons about “what it means to be a man” from his father, the media, and pornography. However, Xander’s ideas about how to be manly often run counter to Xander’s actual desires and needs, and he’s in constant conflict between what he, as a young man, is supposed to want, and what he actually wants. 
Xander is confused. He gets that way a lot.
Real men get into fights. One of Xander’s many admirable traits is his willingness to fight the good fight no matter what. He’ll pull Cordelia out of a raging fire. He’ll shove Willow to safety as he takes on a vampire without the aid of any weapons. This is a good quality of his, but sometimes he gets into physical altercations when he doesn’t have to and has a negative opinion of himself when he fails to be macho “enough.”
Case in point: the episode “Halloween.” Xander stands up for Buffy when Larry calls her “fast,” and then grabs him by the shirt with a vow to do something “manly.” Larry is quickly about to get the upper hand in the fight, but Buffy twists Larry’s arm behind his back and sends him limping away. Xander is furious – at Buffy, for humiliating him in front of their classmates. He’s convinced that everyone will make fun of him for being rescued by a girl, even though the person made to look most ridiculous in that situation is Larry. He’s terrified of being seen as weak and cowardly and would rather lose in a fight than be rescued by a girl.
And this is hardly the only incident where Xander shows insecurity over his lack of physical strength and fighting power. He hero-worships Riley for possessing the fighting skills he lacks, even though Xander has probably fought and killed more vampires and demons while fighting next to Buffy than Riley did during his time in the Initiative. He comes down hard on himself for not having superpowers and not being able to “contribute” to the group the way Giles, Buffy, and Willow can, even though he’s saved all of their lives on several different occasions. He doesn’t fit his own ideal image of a macho man. 
Who says his Snoopy Dance isn’t manly?
Real men want swooning, submissive ladies.The audience has been witness to some of Xander’s sexist fantasies regarding women. We’ve seen him fantasize about rescuing a trembling, victimized Buffy from a vampire and then leaping onstage for a guitar solo that makes her eyes flutter and her panties wet. We’ve seen him fantasize about two younger, submissive potential Slayers coming into his room to have a threesome with him while other potential Slayers have a Sapphic pillow fight in the background. We’ve seen him wax rhapsodic about the idea of a submissive sexbot, and when his girlfriend and friends look at him with disgust, he says, “No guys, huh? I miss Oz. He would’ve gotten it. He wouldn’t have said anything, but he would have gotten it.”
Xander is wrong, of course – Oz never took the bait when another man invited him to sexually objectify a girl. But he’s also wrong about himself. Xander may talk a good game about wanting a submissive woman to serve him, but his dating history points to an opposite trend of being attracted to assertive – sometimes even aggressive – women. His first girlfriend is Cordelia, the former queen bee of the high school, a girl who defeated a vampire simply by threatening him. His second girlfriend is Anya, a former vengeance demon who spent one thousand years eviscerating men, a woman who never shied away from expressing an opinion even if others found it rude. He’s attracted to both Buffy and Faith, Slayers with physical strength who also know how to fight with their words, but any attraction he had to Kendra died when she couldn’t look him in the eye while speaking to him.
Xander and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), his original acid-tongued sweetheart
There’s a part of Xander that wants the stereotypical male fantasy of a girl who will serve at his whim, but the larger part of him seems to crave a woman who will speak her mind and banter with him. If he ever did find a girlfriend who only wanted to serve and please, he’d be bored within a few hours, though I’m not sure he has the self-awareness to realize that yet.
Real men always want sex. Xander can be gross when it comes to women. He makes sexually objectifying comments about his female friends. He thinks about sex all the time, as confirmed when Buffy gains the ability to read minds and gets wind of his inner monologue. He sees nothing wrong with making comments about women’s bodies in front of his female friends, and fantasizing about Willow and Tara’s sex life in front of Buffy and Dawn.
Yet there’s another side of Xander when it comes to sex, one that doesn’t come out as often: he values and craves intimacy. When he dreams about Joyce Summers in “Restless,” he confirms that he’s more interested in comfort than in conquest: “I’m a comfortador.” After he has sex with Faith, he doesn’t brag to his friends the way we’d expect him to, but tries to prevent Buffy from finding out and only spills the beans when he thinks the information might help – and he’s crushed when Faith dismisses their one-night stand as meaningless to her: “I thought we had a connection.”
It’s clear that intimacy is more important to Xander than merely getting his rocks off, but the side of him he chooses to show with his friends is the side that’s gross and reducing women to sex objects – even though his friends like the sweet side of Xander a lot more than the pig he often lets out.
Real men get into fights. Real men want submissive women. Real men want sex. These are the lessons that Xander internalizes, and where does that leave him? It leaves him feeling inadequate. It leaves him feeling unloved. It leaves him angry, and when he’s angry, he uses his words as weapons and cruelly lashes out at the people he loves the most – in short, repeating some of the behavior he learned from his father.
The worst part is that Xander often isn’t self-aware enough to see what he’s doing, even as he can recognize this detrimental behavior in other men. He criticizes his friend Riley for acting too macho and blowing up a crypt without waiting for backup. He’s disgusted with Spike for creating the Buffybot. He thinks Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew are creepy and gross. He’s right about all of these things, but if someone were to point out the similarities between his behavior and theirs, he’d be in deep denial to hear it – because as much as Xander wants to be like other men, he wants even more to not be like those men, those jerks who take advantage of women and try too hard to wow people with their macho behavior.
Xander has many wonderful qualities. He can be very brave, loyal, selfless, and loving, and the boy knows how to turn a phrase. He can also be insecure, angry, sexist, cruel, and judgmental. Close to the end of the series, he becomes more at peace with himself and lets go of much of his anger and judgment, but if we didn’t live in a culture that fetishizes and celebrates the most aggressive and disgustingly macho versions of masculine behavior, maybe he would have reached that point much earlier in his life. 
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Xander becomes more at peace with himself – and becomes a better friend – when he gets over the need to be our culture’s definition of a man and instead does what he does best: take on the more traditionally feminine role of comforter and emotional support for the people he loves. 
Xander embraces his comfortador role, helps Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and saves the world with a hug.

Lady T is a writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Xander Harris Has Masculinity Issues

Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), cavalry guy with a rock (not pictured: rock)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a great cast of characters that includes many flawed, admirable, psychologically complex (white) women. Two of them (Buffy and Cordelia) are some of my most beloved television characters ever. Another (Willow) fascinates me and infuriates me in equal measure. The rest of the female cast resonate more with other people than they do with me, giving a variety of watchers (as in television watchers, not the Council of Watchers, hey-o!) a large selection of women to relate to and find inspiring.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer also has Xander Harris, a character who is, perhaps, not as inspiring for a feminist viewer of the show. After all, he’s a bit of a Nice Guy. He’s slut-shamed his romantic partners and female friends. He’s been a judgmental jerk about his friends’ lives. He’s my favorite character on the show.
*record scratch* Wait, what?
Seriously? This guy?
Yes, it’s true. Despite Xander’s many flaws, despite the fact that he’s said and done a few things that have made me want to reach into the television screen and shake him a little, I still count him as my favorite of the many characters on Buffy that I love.
Some of the reasons I love Xander are obvious to anyone who knows me or has read my writing: he’s funny and a loyal friend, and I tend to be attracted to that particular character archetype (see Weasley, Ron and Gamgee, Samwise). I also love him for his bravery and the fact that he always fights the good fight despite not having any superpowers. Other reasons are less obvious, because I’m a feminist and Xander has, let’s say, issues with women – but if anything, my feminism has made me appreciate him as a character even more than when I first started watching the show.
When I look at Xander through a feminist lens, I find him fascinating because he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a would-be “man’s man” – obsessed with being manly – whose only close friends are women. He’s both a perpetrator and victim of sexual assault and/or violation of consent. He’s both attracted to and intimidated by strong women. He jokes about objectifying women and viewing sex as some sort of game, but in more intimate moments, seems to value romance and real connection. He’s a willing participant in the patriarchy and also a victim of it.
The last point is the main one I’m going to address in this post. I hesitate to wring my hands and go “what about teh menz?!” but I think deconstructing traditional masculinity is an important part of feminism, and while Buffy has excellent commentary on the way gender roles have negatively affected women, it also shows us, through Xander, how these gender roles are no picnic for men, either. 
Xander and a phallic symbol. He has a complicated relationship with these things.
Xander is a boy who struggles with his relationship with masculinity, and the source of much of this struggle can be traced back to his childhood. In the first few seasons, we’re given brief glimpses into Xander’s home life, and even though we never see his parents onscreen, what we dosee isn’t pretty. His mother doesn’t recognize his voice when he calls her at home. During the holidays, he spends his nights on the lawn in a sleeping bag to avoid his family’s drunken Christmas fights. He watches movies with Anya, Buffy, and Riley in his family’s basement as his parents fight loudly above them. When Buffy expresses shock that a villain of the week turned out to be a cruel children’s baseball coach, Xander replies, “Well, you obviously haven’t played Kiddie League. I’m surprised it wasn’t one of the parents,” showing a disturbing familiarity with the way adults can be harmful to children.
The show leaves little hints about Xander’s upbringing throughout the first four seasons, but the first time we see one of his family members is in “Restless.” During Xander’s dream sequence, he constantly finds himself returning to his parents’ basement, and we’re left with the impression that his biggest fear is to be stuck aimless, drifting from job to job, and being a loser.
Then the basement door opens, and we see the shrouded, partially obscured vision of Xander’s father. A physically imposing man, he walks down the stairs and berates Xander for being ashamed of his family. And Xander, who has fought vampires, who stared down a vicious bully with a quiet smile on his face, who has saved the lives of each one of his friends at one point or another, can’t look his father in the eye. He’s at a loss for words, offering only a weak “You don’t understand” before hearing the rest of his father’s tirade: “The line ends here with us, and you’re not gonna change that. You don’t have the heart.”
And his father reaches into Xander’s chest and pulls out his heart.
Xander and his father (Michael Harney)
Yes, the person who really ripped out Xander’s heart was the spirit of the First Slayer, but the point is clear: his father is the scariest, most threatening figure in Xander’s life. He is literally the source of Xander’s nightmares, and his speech speaks to Xander’s biggest fear: that he will never escape the cycle of abuse from his family, and that he might someday become just like his father.
Presented with an unhealthy example of abusive, aggressive male behavior throughout his life, Xander struggles with his masculinity as a teen and a young man. He doesn’t have a healthy relationship with his father, the only male authority figure he admires (Giles) mostly views him as an annoyance, and after Jesse dies in the second episode, he has no male friends.
Xander is essentially left to his own devices to construct his version of masculinity, and seems to have pieced lessons about “what it means to be a man” from his father, the media, and pornography. However, Xander’s ideas about how to be manly often run counter to Xander’s actual desires and needs, and he’s in constant conflict between what he, as a young man, is supposed to want, and what he actually wants. 
Xander is confused. He gets that way a lot.
Real men get into fights. One of Xander’s many admirable traits is his willingness to fight the good fight no matter what. He’ll pull Cordelia out of a raging fire. He’ll shove Willow to safety as he takes on a vampire without the aid of any weapons. This is a good quality of his, but sometimes he gets into physical altercations when he doesn’t have to and has a negative opinion of himself when he fails to be macho “enough.”
Case in point: the episode “Halloween.” Xander stands up for Buffy when Larry calls her “fast,” and then grabs him by the shirt with a vow to do something “manly.” Larry is quickly about to get the upper hand in the fight, but Buffy twists Larry’s arm behind his back and sends him limping away. Xander is furious – at Buffy, for humiliating him in front of their classmates. He’s convinced that everyone will make fun of him for being rescued by a girl, even though the person made to look most ridiculous in that situation is Larry. He’s terrified of being seen as weak and cowardly and would rather lose in a fight than be rescued by a girl.
And this is hardly the only incident where Xander shows insecurity over his lack of physical strength and fighting power. He hero-worships Riley for possessing the fighting skills he lacks, even though Xander has probably fought and killed more vampires and demons while fighting next to Buffy than Riley did during his time in the Initiative. He comes down hard on himself for not having superpowers and not being able to “contribute” to the group the way Giles, Buffy, and Willow can, even though he’s saved all of their lives on several different occasions. He doesn’t fit his own ideal image of a macho man. 
Who says his Snoopy Dance isn’t manly?
Real men want swooning, submissive ladies.The audience has been witness to some of Xander’s sexist fantasies regarding women. We’ve seen him fantasize about rescuing a trembling, victimized Buffy from a vampire and then leaping onstage for a guitar solo that makes her eyes flutter and her panties wet. We’ve seen him fantasize about two younger, submissive potential Slayers coming into his room to have a threesome with him while other potential Slayers have a Sapphic pillow fight in the background. We’ve seen him wax rhapsodic about the idea of a submissive sexbot, and when his girlfriend and friends look at him with disgust, he says, “No guys, huh? I miss Oz. He would’ve gotten it. He wouldn’t have said anything, but he would have gotten it.”
Xander is wrong, of course – Oz never took the bait when another man invited him to sexually objectify a girl. But he’s also wrong about himself. Xander may talk a good game about wanting a submissive woman to serve him, but his dating history points to an opposite trend of being attracted to assertive – sometimes even aggressive – women. His first girlfriend is Cordelia, the former queen bee of the high school, a girl who defeated a vampire simply by threatening him. His second girlfriend is Anya, a former vengeance demon who spent one thousand years eviscerating men, a woman who never shied away from expressing an opinion even if others found it rude. He’s attracted to both Buffy and Faith, Slayers with physical strength who also know how to fight with their words, but any attraction he had to Kendra died when she couldn’t look him in the eye while speaking to him.
Xander and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), his original acid-tongued sweetheart
There’s a part of Xander that wants the stereotypical male fantasy of a girl who will serve at his whim, but the larger part of him seems to crave a woman who will speak her mind and banter with him. If he ever did find a girlfriend who only wanted to serve and please, he’d be bored within a few hours, though I’m not sure he has the self-awareness to realize that yet.
Real men always want sex. Xander can be gross when it comes to women. He makes sexually objectifying comments about his female friends. He thinks about sex all the time, as confirmed when Buffy gains the ability to read minds and gets wind of his inner monologue. He sees nothing wrong with making comments about women’s bodies in front of his female friends, and fantasizing about Willow and Tara’s sex life in front of Buffy and Dawn.
Yet there’s another side of Xander when it comes to sex, one that doesn’t come out as often: he values and craves intimacy. When he dreams about Joyce Summers in “Restless,” he confirms that he’s more interested in comfort than in conquest: “I’m a comfortador.” After he has sex with Faith, he doesn’t brag to his friends the way we’d expect him to, but tries to prevent Buffy from finding out and only spills the beans when he thinks the information might help – and he’s crushed when Faith dismisses their one-night stand as meaningless to her: “I thought we had a connection.”
It’s clear that intimacy is more important to Xander than merely getting his rocks off, but the side of him he chooses to show with his friends is the side that’s gross and reducing women to sex objects – even though his friends like the sweet side of Xander a lot more than the pig he often lets out.
Real men get into fights. Real men want submissive women. Real men want sex. These are the lessons that Xander internalizes, and where does that leave him? It leaves him feeling inadequate. It leaves him feeling unloved. It leaves him angry, and when he’s angry, he uses his words as weapons and cruelly lashes out at the people he loves the most – in short, repeating some of the behavior he learned from his father.
The worst part is that Xander often isn’t self-aware enough to see what he’s doing, even as he can recognize this detrimental behavior in other men. He criticizes his friend Riley for acting too macho and blowing up a crypt without waiting for backup. He’s disgusted with Spike for creating the Buffybot. He thinks Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew are creepy and gross. He’s right about all of these things, but if someone were to point out the similarities between his behavior and theirs, he’d be in deep denial to hear it – because as much as Xander wants to be like other men, he wants even more to not be like those men, those jerks who take advantage of women and try too hard to wow people with their macho behavior.
Xander has many wonderful qualities. He can be very brave, loyal, selfless, and loving, and the boy knows how to turn a phrase. He can also be insecure, angry, sexist, cruel, and judgmental. Close to the end of the series, he becomes more at peace with himself and lets go of much of his anger and judgment, but if we didn’t live in a culture that fetishizes and celebrates the most aggressive and disgustingly macho versions of masculine behavior, maybe he would have reached that point much earlier in his life. 
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Xander becomes more at peace with himself – and becomes a better friend – when he gets over the need to be our culture’s definition of a man and instead does what he does best: take on the more traditionally feminine role of comforter and emotional support for the people he loves. 
Xander embraces his comfortador role, helps Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and saves the world with a hug.

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

Quote of the Day from "When TV Became Art: What We Owe to Buffy" by Robert Moore

Buffy on the verge of killing a vampire

In an article published way back in 2009, Robert Moore made the case in PopMatters for why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is such an important television show:

Without any question, Buffy revolutionized the role of women on television, more even than Mary Tyler Moore or Cagney and Lacey or Murphy Brown or Ally McBeal. If you look at female heroes (as opposed to hapless heroines–I have always thought that the definition of heroine should be “endangered female in need of rescue by male hero”) in the history of TV, you will be astonished at how few there are prior to the nineties. You have Annie Oakley in the fifties and Emma Peel on The Avengers in the sixties, and to a degree Wonder Woman (who spent a great deal of her time worrying about impressing her boss Col. Steve Trevor) and The Bionic Woman (the weaker spin off to The Six Million Dollar Man). This all changed in the nineties, first with Dana Scully on The X-Files and then with Xena. But the former, as competent as she was as an FBI professional, was not sufficiently iconic to change TV, while the latter, sufficiently iconic, was too cartoonish to inspire future female heroes. Buffy was the turning point. You can write the history of female heroes on TV as Before Buffy and After Buffy. It is not a coincidence that most of the female heroes on TV arose in the wake of the little blonde vampire slayer. Look at the roster: Aeryn Sun (Farscape), Max (Dark Angel), Sydney Bristow (Alias), Kate Austin (Lost), Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (along with a plethora of other strong women on Battlestar Galactica), Olivia Dunham (Fringe), Sarah Connor and Cameron (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Veronica Mars, and an almost uncountable number of lesser characters. Buffy made TV safe for strong women. This isn’t art, but it is the content of art. Buffy guaranteed that TV as art would make a place for heroic women.
While I recognize that we can go back and forth for the end of time about whether Buffy (the show and the character) is feminist or antifeminist, I think we can at least agree that the simple statement “Buffy made TV safe from strong women” is pretty compelling and hard to entirely disagree with. 
My seven-year-old niece Sophia visited me recently in New York. When it was bedtime, and we were browsing through Netflix to find something to watch before we went to sleep, she wanted Buffy. The next day when we woke up, she immediately asked if we could watch Buffy while we ate breakfast. When we got home from New York sightseeing, she wanted Buffy. We skipped many of the violent, scarier episodes (“Hush,” anyone?), but she loved watching Buffy save her friends and fellow high school students by destroying monsters with her bare hands. 
Now Sophia takes Taekwondo. She showed me some of her moves the last time I saw her, and said, “I bet I’ll be able to kick as much butt as Buffy soon, maybe more!” 
I don’t want to get bogged down about how it sucks in a way that Buffy’s ability comes exclusively from superpowers. I get that, and I could write about it endlessly, but in this moment, I don’t care because Sophia doesn’t care. She watches Buffy and sees a woman who kicks ass, and she wants to emulate that. It’s tough to over-analyze and intellectualize a TV show when you’re watching a young girl practice roundhouse kicks because she wants to be a strong badass like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I have to say, it’s much more heartwarming to see her excited about becoming a strong woman with martial arts skills than it was to watch her pretend she couldn’t speak–because she wanted to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid.