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“Into every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer” (Whedon, 1ABB01). This summarizes the premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 1996, the series began with Buffy, an average teenage girl living with her recently divorced mother in an upper-middle class neighborhood in the fictional Sunnydale, California. Buffy, however, was not all that average. Through the years, Buffy battles vampires and demons, while being ostracized by her peers for being “weird.” Her beauty does not save her from being viewed as a freak by her classmates, nor does being the Slayer save her from the pangs of puberty. From its outset, Buffy was hailed as a feminist show, delivering intelligent thought-provoking television while challenging the stereotype of the dumb blonde who gets murdered at the beginning of horror movies. Buffy had flaws and vulnerabilities, but also had incredible inner- and physical strength. When her first boyfriend Angel, a vampire with a soul, tells her that she is not like other girls, she replies with a smile, “Yes, I am” (Whedon 3ABB20).
With such a strong feminist message, it is very unfortunate that the show became the opposite of what it started out to embody. Angel, to whom she loses her virginity at the age of sixteen, loses his soul and turns on her, killing her friends and threatening her family. She eventually has to kill him, a harsh lesson which could be construed as an abstinence message. During her first year in college, she sleeps with a young man believing it to be the start of a new relationship when all he wanted was a one night stand. That same year, she meets her second boyfriend Riley, a government soldier, who eventually leaves her because he is threatened by the fact that she is stronger than he is. Then, there is Spike, Buffy’s non-boyfriend boyfriend. Spike was once an evil vampire who fell in love with Buffy because of her strength and inner-beauty.
Spike was shown to have a miraculous capacity for love and tenderness even without a soul or human conscience, making him an anomaly in the canon of the series. During the show’s six and seventh seasons, he began to embody the feminist message the show originally sought to display. In Season Six, Buffy and Spike started a doomed sexual relationship, filled with violence and self-hate. It was here that the show turned into an almost anti-feminist nightmare. Buffy, who had died and been brought back to life in Season Five, was desperate to feel love even if she did not return that love. She is forceful and dominant with Spike, often times storming into his home and ripping his clothes off without his permission. She demands his love, using him as a sexual object, and acts violently towards him when she does not get her way, beating him nearly to death on one occasion. She turns into the stereotype of the “bad boyfriend” whereas Spike becomes the battered spouse. However, the show’s writers intended for the audience to see the opposite of this. Fearing a drop in the ratings, they decided to have Spike attempt to rape Buffy (Whedon 6ABB19). The audience was forced to see the battered lover turn against his abuser in a cruel twist on “battered wife syndrome.” Spike is able to stop himself before he commits the act, and Buffy pushes him away. The damage was already done. The viewers saw their feminist icon, their heroine despite her flaws, turned into a victim, laying on the floor in a crumpled heap.
Whereas in seasons before her boyfriends had left, never to return, for “her own good” (Whedon, 3ABB22), Spike leaves to better himself for Buffy and returns with his soul though his sanity is a bit worse for wear. As his mental capabilities return, he begins a small journey of “empowerment.” He realizes that Buffy used him and finally confronts her about her previous treatment of him. She never apologizes, never has to answer to anyone about her behavior, but admits that she has feelings for Spike. Does this excuse her bad behavior and her sexual assaults on Spike? Should those things be excused because Spike attempted to rape Buffy? The answer to both is a resounding no. Nothing can make what Spike tried to do all right, and nothing Buffy could do can take away the hurt she caused him. The relationship was unhealthy for them both, despite the mutual sexual attraction. The series ends with neither Spike nor Buffy in a healthy emotional place in their lives. In fact, it ends with Spike being dead, and Buffy left to smile while talking about going to the mall. Now, that’s feminism!
Analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Whereas Buffy had been touted as feminism’s great hope for television viewing, it played into some very gendered stereotypes. Even though the character of Buffy was supposed to be the anti-stereotype to the scared blonde girl in the horror genre, the writers played into the very thing they sought to distance themselves from. Buffy is very petite, mousy, and very blonde. It is never explained how someone who trains and exercises for seven years never attains any muscle mass. She whines about split-ends, spends far too much time devoted to thinking about shoes, and is portrayed as seemingly stupid. Even with an SAT score of 1430 (Whedon 3ABB08), the audience sees that it is through luck and keen perception that Buffy is able to solve her Scooby Doo-esque mysteries instead of through real intelligence. The viewers are supposed to believe that this makes her a “normal” teenage girl. The men around her flaunt their mental superiority while Buffy resorts to baby-talk and flubbing words purposefully in an attempt to be cute. When asked what people will think of her own high SAT score, Cordelia, the pillar of the high school elite, replies with a look of disgust, “Please! I have some ways to cover these things up!” (Whedon 3ABB08). What are teenage girls supposed to take away from this situation? They are being told that intelligence is a stigma, neither the popular girl nor the unpopular girl wants to be viewed as “brainy.”
Sex, or the lack of it, is an important factor in any teen’s life, but the message is clear in the fictional universe of Buffy: If you are female and like sex, you’re either evil, crazy, or both. In all instances of Buffy’s sexual encounters, she is punished in some way, a karmic way of telling her to keep her panties on. The female characters who enjoy sex or who are sexually aggressive/dominant are vampires or murderers. Faith, a second Slayer, says it best when she mocks Buffy for why she does not act on her sexual impulses more often. She smirks, “It would be wrong” (Whedon 4ABB16). Faith does not believe that being sexually free is wrong; she does not believe in deny oneself any kind of physical pleasure. Buffy is often stuck in a rather prudish mindset. For Buffy, to deviate from “normal” missionary sex is to be a step closer to the evil she fights. She balks and reacts as if she is offended when Spike suggests they try bondage, but later fantasizes about tying him up. She cannot cope with her “deviant” sexual desires, so she blames the object of those desires. She cries out, “Why do I let [Spike] do those things to me?” (Whedon 6ABB11). Her inability to deal with her own sexuality leads her to her violent behave towards Spike because she believes he is the one at fault.
The major problem with Buffy’s feminist outlook is that it is skewed. Instead of creating a character that is a strong feminist role model, Joss Whedon simply took a cheerleader stereotype and graphed overly masculine traits onto it. Michael Kimmel describes one of the basic rules of masculinity as being “the relentless repudiation of the feminine” (Shaw and Lee 465), which Buffy definitely reinforces on its female characters. Anything Buffy does that is viewed as feminine often leads her to be chastised as silly and frivolous by the men she is surrounded by. Male horror heroes such as Ash from Army of Darkness and Dr. Van Helsing from Dracula and equally masculine villains such as Freddie Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street would never be caught having a conversation about shoes or lip gloss. Buffy’s “feminine” side is stripped slowly away over the course of seven seasons. Whereas she started by wearing bright pastel colors and lots of make-up, she ended by wearing very somber, subdued clothes as if she was always dressed for a funeral, quite possible her own.
Kimmel goes on to write, “What makes a man a man is that he is reliable in a crisis” (465). One could also say that is true for what Buffy became. She was forced to give up “girlish” (Whedon 1ABB03) concerns and make the tough decisions no one else wanted to make, even if it meant the deaths of many people. She lives “life on the edge” (Shaw and Lee 465), which often times means she risks losing her lives and the people she loves. The men who created the Slayer never meant for her to have friends, never to know love; she always only meant to fight and be self-sacrificing (Whedon 7ABB15). The tragedy of being the “Chosen One” is simply that; it means you’re alone. Buffy, unlike real men, cannot look for alternatives to the limitations she has been given and the code of conduct that constricts her (Shaw and Lee 465). While men can find ways to get around the “traditional definitions” (465) of masculinity, Buffy has no choice. As the Slayer, she has a destiny to which she is bound. Kimmel explains that it is the frustration of feeling trapped within one’s own skin that leads to the “defensiveness, the anger, the confusion” men experience. Perhaps, this too can explain Buffy’s reactions and behavior, but we cannot make excuses; no more than one should make excuses for male violence as “boys being boys.”
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I just noticed a lot of spelling mistakes in the article, so I'll have to email my Prof with a revised version later.
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Of course, this might just be my own personal reaction...I'm still a kid. Once Buffy left high school, I just lost interest. Her life sort of lacked definition after that. Not to mention that one of my favorite things about the early seasons was that she had to keep being the Slayer a secret--once people like her mom and her boyfriends knew she was a vampire slayer, it lost that little edge.
Oh, and there is the Dawn factor. ERLACKKKKK.
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