To read more of Ana’s writings, including her snarktastic literary deconstructions, visit her website at www.AnaMardoll.com.
The radical notion that women like good movies
To read more of Ana’s writings, including her snarktastic literary deconstructions, visit her website at www.AnaMardoll.com.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) |
Shock |
Sally |
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Jessica Critcher loves to write about feminism and gender issues, and she is a regular contributor to Gender Focus. While she loves living in Boston, she often misses Honolulu, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English (and forgot that there was such a thing as snow).
The Princess and the Frog (2009) |
Tiana and Prince Naveen-turned-frog |
This is a guest review by Clint Waters.
Roughly ten years ago, the Broadway musical Chicago was adapted for the silver screen by Bill Condon and directed by Rob Marshall. This film is oh-so appropriate for Women and Gender in Musicals Week because it explores the darker side of an era when First-Wave Feminists had recently won the right to vote and were continually fighting for equality. However, instead of picket lines and hunger strikes, the women of Chicago manipulate sexuality and violence to gain the upper-hand over their male counterparts and for a myriad of other less-than-pure intentions.
Roxie Hart, our lady protagonist played by Renee Zellweger,
An unforgettable number, “The Cell Block Tango,” occurs during Roxie’s first of many nights in Jail. As the lights go out and she sobs herself to sleep, the cells come alive with individual sounds that form a Stomp-esque intro to the song where several inmates detail what brought them there. Each of them is in for the murder of a lover or husband.
Here, we have an interesting blend of shades and hues labeled “femme fatale.” Most are revealed to have killed for seemingly silly reasons and others for being scorned by adulterers. What makes the number unforgettable is their sheer crassness toward their victims, yet they still cling to their pleas of not guilty: “I didn’t do it, but if I done it, how could you tell me that I was wrong?” This scene also has some very striking visuals and imaginative uses for red cloth representing blood/death:
I don’t mean to say that I dislike this movie. In fact, you will never hear me say that. I LOVE this movie. Although it may not be the deepest of films, it knows what it is and does it well. Aesthetically speaking, it is a gorgeous film with gorgeous women and takes a lot of strides to make everything look and feel Vaudevillian. As I mentioned earlier, the songs take place in Roxie’s mind, so the creative directors spared no expense on blending stage effects with surrealism. (For example, the audience, while played by real people, sits motionless like wax figures because after all, the show is about Roxie. In another scene the members of the media are literally represented as the puppets that they are.)
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In 1821, Oregon Territory, Adam Pontipee (the impossibly rugged Howard Keel) is looking to fetch himself a wife—not for the purposes of high-falutin’ romance, family, and lifelong happiness, no. “I’d like best a widow woman that ain’t afraid to work,” he says, at the general store, where he’d just as quickly pick up a mate as he would 25 pounds of chewing tobacco. “There’s seven of us men, me and my six brothers. Place is like a pigsty, and the food tastes worse….” Adam is out for marriage in the purest economical sense: in this new territory, there are ten men for every woman, and so Adam’s priority is availability, not compatibility.
“Bless Yo’ Beautiful Hide,” he booms, and it’s not until he sees Millie (Jane Powell, strong of axe and soft of heart) that he knows he can go out and buy with gusto. She makes great stew, so that’s half the battle, and she is used to tending men in a boarding house, so he considers her the perfect bride.
He offers marriage, she accepts (as she’s fallen for him on first sight), and off they go in his wagon back to his cabin in the mountains, where she meets his six red-bearded, bullish brothers. Millie bristles at caring for her brother-in-laws without some control, and so she withholds a hot breakfast and newly washed clothes until they promise to shave and settle down like gentleman. It seems that what this house has longed for is not an extra hand in the washroom, but a gentle and firm guide to proper etiquette.
What Millie discovers, as she gets to know these boys, is that they long to go out and snatch up girls of their own—which they do, in spectacular fashion, at the town’s barn raising. The brothers Pontipee, all in primary colors, demonstrate through dazzling choreography how dashing and desirable they can be, and sweep the girls off their feet. Just watch how leapfrogging, arm wrestling, log-rolling, and balletic machismo pays off. (This is the most spectacular sequence of the movie, and it’s impossible to watch without a slaphappy grin. Jacques d’Amboise and a very young Russ Tamblyn steal the show as Ephraim and Gideon, defying gravity with every move.)
This review by Myrna Waldron previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on September 13, 2012.
Corpse Bride Poster (Source: Wikipedia.org) |
Corpse Bride is generally a charming film, with some interesting themes centered around acceptance of death, arranged marriage, and the differences of women. The score and musical sequences are catchy, and the stop-motion animation is top-notch. I often found myself thinking, “How did they DO that?” I was particularly pleasantly surprised at how well the women were developed in the story. This is something I think Tim Burton does fairly well, at least judging from the films I’ve seen of his based on original stories – the women in his films are generally proactive, multi-dimensional and serve an important role in his films. He may have started to become a parody of himself in his later years, but he is one of the few mainstream directors whose personal style makes an indelible impression on the film.
Emily, looking uncharacteristically spooky. (Source: TimBurtonCollective.com) |
Victor and Emily about to (re)marry. (Source: Digitalrendezvous.net) |
Another aspect of the story I wish to discuss is the characterizations of Emily, the Corpse Bride, and Victoria, the very prim and proper Living Bride. Although there is a subtle “Betty and Veronica” dichotomy, neither is expressly presented as the “ideal” match for Victor in the love triangle. The only reason Emily does not end up with Victor is simply because she is dead – not because she is conniving, nasty, or not as attractive as Victoria. Oddly enough, it’s implied that Emily was more attractive, as she’s surprisingly cute for a corpse. She’s also got…rather defined curves for someone so otherwise decayed. When she becomes jealous of Victoria, there is a legitimate reason for her to feel this way – she points out that she is married to Victor. And notably, her anger is mostly directed at Victor, not at Victoria, which is important since the woman tends to get the blame in love triangle/cheating situations, regardless of which partner is the one who does the cheating. When Emily’s friends try to cheer her up by pointing out her presumably superior traits, she is not swayed by this – her heartbreak is not that Victor loves another, it is that as a dead woman she can never truly win his heart. However, it is implied near the end that Victor is the true love of both women. In the “Remains of the Day” sequence, it is said that Emily was waiting for her true love to come set her free. Victor’s intended sacrifice, and Emily’s realization that she can’t take away the dreams of marriage and love from Victoria after having her own dreams taken, are the catalysts that allow Emily to be set free and “move on,” so to speak.
Victoria looks at Victor after catching Emily’s bouquet. (Source: Drafthouse.com) |
The film is fairly feminist for a horror-comedy, but it’s not perfect. There are at least two fat jokes in the story – a mean-spirited form of discrimination that needs to just end already. I was particularly annoyed that Mrs. Van Dort is portrayed as not being aware just how fat she is. Let’s set the record straight – if someone’s fat, they KNOW, thank you. There are also no people of colour in the cast at all. I suppose this is partly justified in that it takes place in Victorian Eastern Europe, and the aesthetic of the living village is severe whites, blacks, and greys, but there’s no reason there couldn’t have been minorities in the underworld village. The closest thing we get to POC representation is a skeletal parody of Ray Charles during the “Remains of the Day” sequence. I suppose Bonejangles, Danny Elfman’s showcase character, could have been black. It’s not really easy to tell when someone’s a skeleton, of course.
Emily talks with Victor’s skeletal dog, Scraps. (Source: Allmoviephoto.com) |
If you watch the actual movie, as I did, as a European expat teaching in a Hong Kong international school and grappling with cross-cultural questions on a daily basis (you try teaching A Bridge To Terabithia to a class of city-dwelling Chinese boys) — not so much. Mulan has always been a problematic text for me because it tries so hard to be culturally sensitive and gender-aware that it positively creaks, and those creaks can be heard by the least-savvy member of the target audience. Its sins are not the sins of historical omission of, say, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but are all the more egregious because they come from a place of awareness. Mulan is an attempt to fix something that was perceived to be, if not wrong, unbalanced. This clumsy attempt to wedge The Ballad of Mulan into the rigid, alien form of a Disney narrative (which, among other things, demands musical numbers, a comic sidekick and a Prince Charming to come home with at the end) doesn’t fix anything, and only serves to remind us what is broken about our global culture. The road to hell is, as ever, paved with good intentions, particularly when it heads from the West to the East.
So, ever mindful of the accusations of racial insensitivity that had been tossed at Aladdin and Pocahontas, and anxious to get it right this time, Disney sent key artists on the movie to China, for a three-week tour of Chinese history and culture. Three weeks! You can totally “do China” in three weeks. This was enough to give them all the visual reference points they needed, and the whistle-stop, touristic nature of their impressions is very much in evidence on the screen. Every Chinese guided tour cliché is tossed into the scenery hotchpotch, from limestone mountains to the Great Wall to the Forbidden City. This isn’t so bad – other Disney movies are set in a vague Mittel-Europe of mountains, forests and lakes – but the loving attention paid to trotting out the visual truisms of courtyard complexes, brush calligraphy, cherry blossoms et al is just window-dressing. Mulan does look like China, but only if you’re leafing through your holiday photos back in your Florida office.
There’s nothing particularly Chinese about Mulan herself, who is so brutally meant to be not-Disney Princess and not-Caucasian it hurts to look at her for long. Poor little Other. She’s shown wearing Japanese make up, and has a facial structure more suggestive of Vietnamese than Chinese (Disney really was embracing post-colonialism). For half the movie, she also has to be not-female. The lack of detail on a 2-D Disney face meant the animators had to design her as able to switch between genders via her hair – and something subtle going on with her eyebrows. The resulting face evokes, more than anything, a pre-op kathoey who hasn’t yet taken advantage of Thailand’s booming plastic surgery clinics in order to make zer gender-reassignment complete.
Oh, Mulan. She’s meant to be non-offensive, and she ends up being not-anything. Despite claims to the contrary, she’s not a feminist hero. She has to dress as a boy to achieve selfhood, and refuses political influence in order to return to the domestic constraints of her father and husband-to-be. The movie itself doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test, if you consider that the only topic the other female characters discuss is Mulan’s marriageability – a hypothetical relationship with a man. The final defeat of the antagonist is achieved by the male Mushu riding on a phallic firecracker, as Mulan flails helplessly at his feet. Positive female role model? Case closed.
Mulan wouldn’t seem like such a frustrating, failed attempt to push gender and cultural boundaries if it had been followed up by other stories of empowered female warrior heroes. A Disney version of Joan of Arc or Boudicca could have been a blast. Unfortunately, since 1998, it’s been pretty much princess as usual. On the bright side, Disney achieved some of their other goals with Mulan. Hong Kong Disneyland (itself the subject of accusations of crass cultural insensitivity) has been doing brisk business since 2005, thanks to a US$2.9billion investment by Hong Kong taxpayers (of which I was one). The majority of tourists are from mainland China. They come to marvel at Western icons like Mickey, and an all-American Main Street that’s a replica of the one in Anaheim. Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Mulan images, they stick around. It feels a tiny bit more like they might have a stake in the happiest place on earth.
This is a guest review by Jessica Freeman-Slade.
The 1968 movie is legendary, almost impossible to remake due to Streisand’s unforgettable turn (recreating her role from the 1964 stage musical), and with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill. It’s based on the true story of 1920s entertainer Fanny Brice, one of the major attractions in the golden age of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies. Fanny knows she’s a star, but is constantly told that her unconventional looks will keep her off the stage (or as her neighbor puts it, “If a girl’s incidentals/are no bigger than two lentils/then to me it doesn’t spell success.”) But Fanny stands out, because she’s hilariously funny and has a golden voice, and so fame, like anyone who watches the movie, finds her irresistible. What the movie has at its core, is a message about female self-confidence, about self-reliance, about how the world reacts to strong women, and how, ultimately it’s all about chutzpah. Which Fanny (and Streisand) has in spades.
Streisand had only appeared in one Broadway show before then, a small but memorable part in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and she was far from the only candidate to play Fanny. When Jule Styne consulted Steven Sondheim about the development of the show, Sondheim had major qualms about potentially casting a marquee star like Mary Martin. “I don’t want to do the life of Fanny Brice with Mary Martin. She’s not Jewish,” he said. “You need someone ethnic for the part.” And Streisand was ethnic, especially when put up against a bevy of chorus girls that looked like they’d stepped straight out of Beach Blanket Bingo. The other contenders before her included Anne Bancroft, Martin, and Carol Burnett, but Streisand took the ugly duckling premise and turned it on its head every time she sang. (Fanny’s first line to a skeptical producer says it all: “Suppose all you ever had for breakfast was onion rolls. Then one day, in walks… a bagel! You’d say, ‘Ugh, what’s that?’ Until you tried it! That’s my problem—I’m a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls.”) And she stood out among the other Broadway stars at the time, in the same way Fanny did in her day.
Yes, I know. You have to believe that this girl…
…is considered unattractive, uncastable, and undesirable.
The real Brice had big gummy features–a clown’s face. And though Streisand looks gorgeous in every shot, even in Fanny’s pre-fame days (check out those amazing nails), she doesn’t lose her undeniably ethnic look. She stands out, especially when surrounded by all the Aryan thin-nosed beauties of the Ziegfeld follies. And so the premise of Funny Girl, of almost every joke, rests on whether you believe that Fanny, despite her face, earns every drop of success because of her extraordinary talent. Each joke has the same structure: someone throws a derogatory comment Fanny’s way. Fanny volleys, with wit and acid and intelligence. The movie provides a model to every girl out there (no matter how attractive she is) about how to deal with a world that doubts you because of your appearance, because of your difference. When everyone’s a critic, especially in the entertainment industry, and you know you’re something special, they will have to accept you as you are, and fall in love with you for what you bring to the performance. Just watch Fanny’s first performance for a theater, and how she bends the audience to her will:
Then the joke changes—how could a guy as perfect and beautiful as Arnstein fall for a gummy-faced girl like Fanny? Because he knows what the rest of the world doesn’t—that she has a spark, she stands out, and that’s a sign she’s going to be a star. But the movie, as it traces Fanny’s rise to stardom, constantly returns to the presumably unassailable fact that she can’t hold Nick, or anything, in place simply by being female and beautiful. And so the movie becomes a commentary on what an unconventional woman does to keep herself successful in a world that doesn’t immediately recognize her talent.
Fanny, blessedly, has little time for people who insist she behave conventionally. Even when she lands the dream job, as a featured player among the glittering chorines of Ziegfeld’s follies, she balks at behaving like any other starlet. When Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon) puts her in the star spot in the closing number, she says, “I can’t Fanny: I can’t sing words like: “I am the beautiful reflection of my love’s affection.” I mean… Well, it’s embarrassing… If I come out opening night…telling the audience how beautiful I am, I’ll be back at [my first job] before the curtain comes down.” When he refuses to do so, Fanny concedes, but finds her own special twist for the number:
Even when Fanny hooks Nick, and even after she gets to sing a ditty about how great it is to be “Sadie, Sadie,” married lady, the story continues to treat Fanny as a liability. When Nick finally starts showing his shortcomings as a card shark, he is too insecure and prideful to ask Fanny to bail him out. He is thrown into prison, and Fanny gets the news just as she’s heading out of the theater for the night. “You still love him, Miss Brice?” the reporters shout. “The name’s Arnstein,” she replies defiantly. This is a woman who refuses to let her critics define her—even if it means putting the joke on her.
What ultimately carries Fanny, and Funny Girl, as one of the greatest musical comedies ever (and makes Fanny one of the best characters, male or female, ever written for Broadway) is that her weapon is always her strength, her self-reliance, that aforementioned chutzpah. Fanny truly believes that she can do or accomplish anything, including saving her own doomed marriage, if someone just gives her the chance. When she and Nick decide to separate after his release from prison, she is utterly heartbroken. But even in that moment, she pulls herself up and delivers a superb performance, looking more beautiful and elegant than ever. And that’s where the message of Funny Girl really sings out: NOTHING is as radiant as self-confidence.
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Jessica Freeman-Slade is a writer who has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She works at Random House as a cookbook editor, and lives in Morningside Heights.
And at this leg of the expedition, we arrive at the year 1987. In the era of big dreams and bigger hair, director/choreographer Adam Shankman (of So You Think You Can Dance fame) introduces us to two young star-crossed lovers Drew (Diego Boneta) and Sherrie (Julianne Hough), struggling bartenders at The Bourbon Room from Anytown U.S.A. who hope to make it big on the Hollywood stage one day. But first, they’ve got a series of karaoke mash-ups to get through.
With carefully choreographed and meticulously lip synced song and dance numbers in the streets, at the bar, on a bus, and anywhere they can grab a hairbrush and pretend it’s a mic, the two declare their love for each other and rock and roll by performing monster ballads from the greatest hair bands, including Journey, White Snake and Night Ranger.
In the midst of Dennis’ woes, and after a few more musical mash-ups chronicling the story of our two lovers, Tom Cruise shakes things up when he enters the scene as rock god Stacee Jaxx in full-on rock star garb: guyliner, mullet, stank attitude, booze breath, and cradling a scantily-clad groupie. That’s around the time when things are kicked into high gear.
But, with the exception of Cruise and Akerman, the acting overall left much to be desired. Hough’s impossibly wide-eyed Sherrie is annoyingly charming, but annoying nonetheless. However, that’s soothed a bit when she shares scenes with Boneta, who is remarkably charismatic onscreen. He brings the right amount of chutzpah and balls to play a rock prince who could share a stage with the larger than life Jaxx.
Not like you picture someone like, say, Brand in a role as a coked out sidekick. You really never know where Lonny ends and where Brand begins … but his scenes with the almost unrecognizable Baldwin are certainly memorable, if anything.
Even though its finest moments all boil down to well-intentioned, high energy karaoke numbers, and its script (co-written by Justin Theroux) left more cheese in the recipe than what was called for, Rock of Ages is still great fun. Really, it’s like a longer, louder version of Glee or American Idol, but with actors who can’t sing rather than singers who can’t act. Plus, it rocks you like a hurricane.
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
The cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
At the end of my first 45 minutes with Sunnydale’s finest, I remember feeling absolute delight. On the promise that they be returned in perfect condition, I borrowed one series after another of my friend’s treasured DVD boxsets, handed over with warnings and reverence, and received with the desperation of an addict. Needless to say I watched nothing but Buffy until reaching the final episode of Season 7 (it didn’t take long). I love this show. I believe it to be one of the most important television shows that has ever been conceived. Yes, there is the Riley blip, and Tara is no natural Scooby, despite her witchy credentials. But out of 144 episodes – that’s almost 7 days of watching Buffy continuously for 16 hours a day* (you’ve got to sleep right) – these niggles are small. It is a work of genius, and I will argue violently against any dissenters.
And yet … I am not particularly a fan of Buffy herself. I’m always on her side when she’s facing the bad guys, whether it’s The Master, Mayor Wilkins, Glory or the downright terrifying Caleb. But when it’s Willow, Faith or Anya that Buffy’s fighting, I can’t help feeling she sort of has it coming.
The entire show champions under-dogs: the nerdy, the quirky, and the excluded. People who aren’t classically beautiful; the unpopular ones that you’re embarrassed to hang out with; the screw-ups and lost souls. And with her perfect hair, kick-ass fighting skills, cool outfits, and dangerously sexy boyfriends, Buffy just doesn’t evoke the empathy of some of her fellow Scoobies. Sure, she has some romantic tangles along the way (excuse the enormous understatement), and definitely messes up occasionally: trying to kill her friends and sister; running away to leave Sunnydale to certain destruction; dying – all notable examples. But when it comes to saving the world, she delivers. She’s awesome at her job. And boy does she know it.
Faith, Buffy’s “rival” slayer |
So when Faith arrives and ends up rocking Buffy’s world, there’s a wonderful satisfaction in watching the pair battle it out. Unpredictable, sexy and wild, Faith personifies the dark side of Buffy: what she could have been if she wasn’t so annoyingly right all the time. But more than that, Faith’s psychological issues make her empathetic: her psychotic behaviour is not only understandable, but almost forgivable. From an unstable and implied abandoned background, Faith openly wishes for the wholesome simplicity Buffy’s life retains despite her Slayer responsibilities. She has a touchingly childlike desperation for the conventional stability that the Scoobies, Giles, Angel and Joyce provide for Buffy. The Mayor’s fatherly affection for Faith appears the only stable relationship she has ever come across, where she is treated like the innocent little girl she seems to have never been allowed to be. It is no wonder that she would do anything for him: wouldn’t most of us do anything for our family after all?
Faith is an emotional Slayer, and it is not a straightforward job for her – she is driven by instinct, pain and desperation, and pushes Buffy further than any of her other adversaries up until that point. When Buffy stabs her at the end of their final confrontation in Season 3, she commits the very action that she condemned Faith for. That Faith survives is the only thing which saves Buffy from a hypocrisy that will stalk her in further conflicts.
But when it comes to Buffy’s hypocrisy and double-standards, no situation makes them clearer than the moment she all too easily decides she has to kill Anya in Season 7’s “Selfless.” Being a bad-ass Vengeance Demon notorious across numerous hell dimensions, Anya is nowhere near as harmless as the bunnies she has an illogical phobia of. Her confrontation with Buffy is vicious, and bloody, and is without a doubt one fight we’re really not rooting for Buffy to win.
Vengeance Demon Anya |
Anya’s devastation after being jilted at the altar by Xander guts her emotionally. When she renews her status as a Vengeance Demon, it’s driven by desolation and grief. Like a lost soul she is doomed to meander through Sunnydale with no sense of purpose after her excruciating break-up with the love of her life, and finally resorts to her work as her only source of pride and fulfilment. The fact that that happens to include administering gory punishment to insensitive frat boys serves first to show the ravages her soul has endured – but subsequently her compassion when she bargains for them to be brought back to life.
Similarly Xander is all too aware of how painful the repercussions of his commitment-phobia are, and pleads with Buffy not to kill his one true love. When Buffy tells him she faced this problem when she stabbed Angel way back in Season 2, I can’t be the only one that felt she had milked that drama one time too many! And here’s why … To compare that relationship with Xander and Anya’s is immature at best, and delusional at worst. Xander and Anya move in together. They get engaged. They profess their love for one another openly. They plan to have children. They can spend whole days together without apocalypse as an excuse. And most importantly of all, they have lots and lots of sex.
Their physical connection, their delight in carnal intimacy, their inappropriate lustful outbursts are demonstrations that Anya and Xander are a grown-up couple. To compare the adult subtleties of the way they relate to one another with the doomed fairytale of Buffy’s teenage love affair shows a complete lack of empathy and understanding on Buffy’s part. She has no idea what it is like to experience love of the kind Anya and Xander share: where it isn’t “end-of-the-world” urgency all the time! Her response to Xander’s pleas with, “I am the law,” before leaving to kill fellow Scooby, Anya, out of some presumed sense of morality simply reeks of arrogance.
Thankfully, Anya survives Buffy’s assault, and in doing so she gives her a glimmer of insight into the lengths love, and not responsibility, will drive a person to. Amazing that after the show’s most exhilarating confrontation of all, she’d need a reminder of that, but it’s a lesson Buffy clearly doesn’t learn easily.
Buffy vs Willow: replacing “and” with “vs” surely never had a more devastatingly exciting depiction onscreen!
As one of the most popular characters, and with an incredibly complex character arc, Willow is arguably the reason why I love this show so much! Endlessly patient and studious throughout Seasons 1 and 2, over time Willow transforms into the embodiment of the “Woman Scorned” becoming a murderous and merciless master of dark magic in Season 6. In this gothic incarnation of unrestrained power Willow expresses all the suppressed frustrations she’s endured as Buffy’s “sideman.” She flaunts her strength, exhibits her magical prowess and becomes the personification of her enraged emotions. There’s a cathartic thrill at seeing someone previously so meek rebel. Countless times over numerous episodes we watch Willow put her own dramas to one side to prioritise Buffy’s needs, but with the death of Willow’s soul-mate she finally lets her instincts take over. Right or wrong lose significance and at last, Willow’s emotional needs are given priority – that she almost destroys the world in the process doesn’t say much for Buffy’s ability to empathise with her dearest friends!
Dark Willow |
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.
*I am no mathematician, and it is testament to my love for Buffy that I actually worked this out.
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