"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Consent Issues (Seasons 1-2) A year ago, I began writing a series called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Consent Issues,” looking at specific episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that included a major plot point related to consent, rape culture, and sexual violence. What I found was illuminating. The show explored sexual violence, misogyny, and rape culture in a number of episodes.
Some of these episodes shone a light on problematic aspects of our society, while others perpetuated rape culture–and some managed to do both at the same time. Here is a roundup of the posts analyzing specific episodes from seasons one and two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Xander isn’t accountable for what he said or did under the hyena possession. “Even before this scene, we knew that Richard was a bad guy and that the Delta Zeta Kappa guys were up to no good, but we were also led to believe that Buffy’s date, Tom, was the nice guy of the group. “This episode has a lot of victim-blaming and slut-shaming. 1. 2.
Bitch Flicks: Women in Science Fiction Week: 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted. Written by Lady T. Joss Whedon is known for creating and writing about strong female characters in his science fiction shows. One of the most popular and complex of these characters is Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow speaks to many people and quite a few have named her their favorite character on the show, from Mark at Mark Watches to Joss Whedon himself, who put the most Willow-centric episode of the series (“Doppelgangland”) on his list of favorite episodes. Another thing that makes Willow so appealing is the fact that her character arc over seven seasons can’t be described in only one way. What story is told when those three arcs are put together?
From the very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has been presented as a shy, sweet, helpful friend to the titular heroine– and from the very second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has shown herself not to be as sweet or innocent as everyone thinks she is. And she does. Or has she? Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted. Compared to her friends’ worries, Willow’s fear seems a little superficial. At the end of the season, though, we learn that Willow’s fears are about much more than simple experiments going wrong. By the end of season four, Willow has gone through a few pretty significant changes. She’s become more focused on magic and less focused on her scientific, “nerdy”pursuits. She’s farther apart from Buffy and Xander than ever, despite loving both of them. She’s entered a romantic relationship with a woman.
Most significantly of all, Willow is confident. She has a life that is fully her own, where she has two things (Tara and magic) that are hers. Or has she? Joss Whedon’s writing for Willow’s dream is clever and filled with misdirection. 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. This sequence is haunting, heartbreaking, and foreboding. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Buffy Kicks Ass. “We saved the world, I say we party. I mean, I got all pretty.” ~ Buffy Summers “Yes, date. And shop and hang out and go to school and save the world from unspeakable demons. You know, I wanna do girlie stuff.” ~ Buffy SummersLet us now discuss the epic feminist awesomeness that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is exactly what it sounds like: A girl, named Buffy Summers, slays vampires and demons and wages war against evil supernatural forces. But first, a short personal history lesson: One fall night in sixth grade, my B.F.F. In middle school Marcella and I used Buffy to cement our friendship. But I digress. The coolest thing about Buffy is that creator Joss Whedon conceptualized the show as a deliberate inversion of horror movie clichés. The show layered this feminist perspective upon a strong tradition of high school and coming-of-age-stories in American pop culture. There is a lot of scholarly research and criticism of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is a hero. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: The View from the Grave: Buffy as Gothic Feminist. Guest post written by Jennifer M. Santos. “It’s a relief to hear papers that don’t go on about feminism.” Such was Patricia Pender’s report on the mood of attendees at the second Slayage Conference in 2006, just three years after Buffy ended (5).
Pender punctuated her discussions of an atmosphere rife with concerns of contextual redundancy with the exclamatory parenthetical, “not more feminism!” Which perspective reigns in 2012? The Gothic has long been known for its tendency to transgress boundaries, especially those boundaries associated with gender. In 2012 – an era of the female as victim (as seen in the Twilight series and even to some extent in the Sookie Stackhouse novels) or “more masculine than the men” (perhaps a holdover from the Lara Croft or Xena) in Gothic and in larger popular culture – the available spaces for female representation are typically depicted as domestic entrapment or usurper of patriarchy (a role distinct, it should be noted, from that of matriarch)
. —. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: A Love Letter to Buffy: How the Vampire Slayer Turned This Girl into a Feminist. Guest post written by Talia Liben Yarmush originally published at The Accidental Typist. Cross-posted with permission. Before Bella, before Sookie, there was Buffy. She fought her way on to the silver screen and slayed her way through seven seasons on prime-time. I was in seventh grade when I turned on Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its premiere episode. In this modern age, after several waves of the Feminist Revolution, the 19th Amendment granting suffrage, Title Nine allowing equal academic and athletic educations, and three women on the Supreme Court, we still live in a society in which young girls choose beauty over brains, and victimization and reliance over independence. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series that redefined television in many ways. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a strong mother and a supportive father.
As a writer, I admire Buffy for its witty dialogue and its gripping drama. Talia Liben Yarmush is a freelance writer and editor, and an aspiring author. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Buffyverse Season 1 Trailer. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Xander Harris: Hyena Boy. Guest post written by Monika Bartyzel originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian. Cross-posted with permission. As soon as Buffy hit television on March 10, 1997, Joss Whedon became the poster boy for geek feminism. Raised by a radical feminist, he always merged his creativity with gender studies which he called his “unofficial minor.” Buffy was created to defy stereotypical expectations, a blonde superhero whose adolescent growing pains were the blueprint for the supernatural evil she vanquished.
This balance struck a chord in viewers, inspiring theoretical interpretations running as rampant as fanfic. Ironically, Alexander LaVelle Harris is based on Joss himself. When Buffy Summers arrives, Xander immediately wants her. Xander sexualizes power, instead of maintaining a respectful attitude towards strong women. It begins rather benignly. “Angel” also marks the beginning of Xander’s war against the souled vampire. Even Willow suffers Xander’s egocentrism. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Are You Ready to Be Strong? Power and Sisterhood in 'Buffy' Guest post written by Amanda Rodriguez. No one will argue that the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t populated with strong female characters.
Buffy’s best friend, Willow, is a computer-hacking lesbian witch with the magical prowess to end the world. Her sister, Dawn, is a mythic Key who can open gateways between dimensions. Faith, Buffy’s sometime friend and ally, is a sexually and physically empowered slayer who revels in her body’s physical gifts. The female villains are also intensely powerful and iconic, ranging from ancient vampires, werewolves, and vengeance demons to genius scientists and even the ultimate foe, The First (though technically genderless, this force often takes the form of Buffy herself). Season 5’s villainess, Glory, is even a goddess whose power is only diminished when she is forced to inhabit the body of a human male, and if that ain’t feminist commentary, I don’t know what is. This is when it gets really good. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Femininity and Conflict in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This piece by Lindsey Keesling previously appeared at her Web site *! [emphatic asterisk] and is cross-posted with permission. Femininity and Conflict in Buffy the Vampire Slayer When the popular movie Twilight first appeared in theaters, it did not take long for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) to shame Twilight’s Edward with a fan video smackdown (“Buffy Vs. Edward”). The video shows Edward stalking Buffy and professing his undying love, with Buffy responding in sarcastic incredulity and staking Edward. While it may appear that this “remix” of the two characters was about Buffy slaying a juvenile upstart and reinforcing her status as the queen of the genre, there was more at stake, so to speak. Dressing to Kill One cannot watch BtVS without noticing the sometimes outlandishly girly way that Buffy is costumed, as well as the berating she often faces as a result.
Life Outside of Slaying They Say Not to Take Work Home Buffy the Relationship Slayer Works Cited “Buffy Vs. Early, Francis. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Xander Harris Has Masculinity Issues. 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.
*record scratch* Wait, what? Yes, it’s true. 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). The last point is the main one I’m going to address in this post. Buffy Week: The Incoherent Metaphysics of the Buffyverse. Contains spoilers for Buffy and Angel. Not the comic books, though. Those never happened. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was famously asking the question: what if, in a typical horror-movie monster-chases-girl scenario, the girl turned around and kicked the monster’s ass?
But it’s also, perhaps less wittingly, asking the question: what happens when an atheist – someone who disavows the existence of all things super- or preternatural in the real world – writes a show about the supernatural? Of course, American TV, and especially the WB in the late 90s, is perhaps not the best forum for a nuanced discussion of faith and religion. On a metatextual level, of course, this all makes perfect sense.
These cracks show themselves most clearly in late-period Buffy, when the series starts to sink under the weight of its own mythos. When Darla, staked as a soulless vampire, is brought back as a human, the soul question gets even more inexplicable. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Why Faith, Anya, and Willow Beat Buffy. I missed Buffy the Vampire Slayer first time around. When it appeared on TV, I was the age the characters were meant to be, so was busy being fixated on appearing cool and hanging out with friends in my town’s equivalent of “The Bronze.” But in my mid-twenties, after studying film and media at university, after reading Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs, and after writing a couple of scripts filled with rage at the lack of interesting female characters anywhere, Buffy finally came into my life.
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.