Why Attempts to Demolish Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a Problem Are Wrong
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an insanely popular television show for many reasons, including its star-studded writing and top-notch performances from some of Hollywood’s best actors. However, above all this, the show is celebrated for being a feminist masterpiece that focuses on a powerful young woman who fights powerful men who try to bring her down. In this way, Buffy succeeds both as an entertaining urban fantasy series and a provocative examination of sex, power, and gender roles in modern society.
However, many modern critics and fans have been reassessing Buffy and I’ve come to an uncontrollable conclusion: that this cornerstone of girl power may be a shockingly bad portrayal of women. These arguments often claim that the show is secretly offensive despite its high-profile anti-imperialist message. Although this has changed the way some fans view their favorite show, defenders of Buffy maintains that the series’ most problematic plot lines and portrayals are simply a side effect of flawed and complex characters.
The Fall of a Feminist Icon
It is almost impossible to discuss significant restructuring Buffy the Vampire Slayer without talking to franchise creator Joss Whedon; After the success of this show, he became the main director of comic book films, leading two films Avengers and Lack. The Justice League the movie. However, his career came to a screeching halt after his ex-wife Kai Cole published a book claiming he had cheated on her numerous times, including with unnamed actors. Buffy. In his scathing comments, he also called Whedon “hypocritical” for his “feminist views” while allegedly lying to his wife of a decade and a half.
Towards the end of that letter, he said he was looking for “people who worship [Whedon] to know that she is a person, and organizations that give her awards for her work as a woman, so that she will think twice in the future about respecting a man who does not practice what he preaches.” Obviously, Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains Whedon’s greatest work, a work designed to be the greatest show ever made. Now that its creator seems to have been exposed as a hypocrite (who also faced allegations of harassment on the set of The Justice League), many have been reevaluating Buffy and how its characters and plot lines can be surprisingly harmful to women.
Critics Charge Buffy Secretly Reinforces the Status Quo
On paper, most of the BuffyWhat’s interesting is that the titular character is a rebel: he constantly defies Giles, his hardened spectator, with the same sass he throws at various evil demons. Buffy is a troublemaker who tangles with corrupt cops and a corrupt mayor, and she never respects authority. This is especially true when he puts the Council of Watchers (basically, his boss’s boss) in their place, reminding them that without the Slayer, their job is literally meaningless.
However, some critics believe that Buffy is actually an example of a male-dominated character. After all, as a sexy, thin, bisexual blonde, Slayer is the epitome of what most men find attractive. For impressionable teenage girls who watched the show in the ’90s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer ironically reinforced some of the regressive beauty standards expected of women, arguably continuing the deeply problematic culture perpetuated by the monarchy the show was designed to excoriate.
Does This Show A Secret Hate Of Powerful Women?
Additionally, beyond her high-profile rebellion, Buffy’s character is presented as a safe and lovable alternative to other women who are portrayed as dangerous transgressors. For example, Faith is a Slayer who loves sex and parties, and the show definitely turns her into a deadly enemy. Willow comes out as gay and a witch, and when she explores her powers, she suddenly becomes a flying Big Bad who can only be talked into mass murder by a useless man (sorry, Xander fans, you know it’s true).
What other cases have in common is simple: women begin by accepting the hidden power that men do not. Then they act in selfish ways before they are vilified and humiliated: Faith serves prison time and returns to follow Buffy’s orders, while Willow rejects dark magic and becomes a loyal little Scoobie again. Each of these women is deliberately compared to Buffy, who always puts her own needs aside for the sake of others.
Fans generally view this as a positive attribute, the same one that makes the X-Men fight for a world that hates and fears them. But Buffy arguably spends most of the TV show named after her as the audience’s hide-and-seek, a group of men forcing her to do what they want until she finally turns against them. In this sense, most of the show portrays Buffy as a woman who is justified in obeying men and maintaining their status quo; Faith and Willow must finally fight Buffy, someone whose job it is to prevent other women from becoming too powerful.
Long story short? The claim is that Buffy it’s a game where rebellious women are tamed: Buffy by the Council, Faith by prison, and Willow by Xander. Heck, even the vengeful demon Anya is controlled by her obsession with a man, eventually trading in all her mysterious abilities to live a humble life at home.
The Argument Against Buffy’s Men
One of the things Buffy the Vampire Slayer it’s great to create villains that fans love to hate. These enemies were mostly men, which helps reinforce the show’s theme of women: the guys would talk and insult a female character before she kills them. All of this is part of why the show feels powerful: what woman watching it wouldn’t be happy to have the power to fight back against the toxic men who always make her uncomfortable?
The main problem with Buffy as a character, however, is that she keeps dating the most wasted men of all. The vampiric Angel is already a redeemed superslayer when Buffy falls in love with him, and takes him back even after he temporarily loses his soul and tries to destroy the whole world. It’s the same with Spike, the notorious serial killer he begins stalking in secret; he goes to retrieve his soul after a close attack on Buffy, and continues to accept her as he did to Angel.
There’s a very sinister subtext in which Buffy is uncontrollably attracted to famous slayers simply because they’re hot, and she takes them back after these characters commit the worst atrocities on her and her friends. Rather than painting our main character as a hero, Buffy is portrayed as a hideous mat who doesn’t hesitate to get back at her tormentors. This undoubtedly sends a bad message to abused women who watch the show, hoping to find the strength to escape from their abusers.
Why They’re All Wrong: It’s complicated
Those are just a few of the reasons why many modern critics are re-examining Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Heck, we haven’t even touched on Xander, the troubled proto-incel that Joss Whedon wrote to be the character of his casting class. However, there is one ironclad defense of the game and its characters that fans continue to embrace: namely, that Buffy is something stronger by having flawed and complicated characters.
Most of Buffy’s own complexities are part of the character’s evolution. Sure, she dates a few hot killers, but eventually breaks up with both of them. Slayer works for a patriarchal group of old farts, but after a few years, he made it clear that they now have to work for him. his. Heck, he even goes back to the worst self-destructive way in human history to save the world from the first evil they’ve ever seen.
If Buffy hadn’t started out as a character with this flaw, such an evolution wouldn’t have happened; Also, it’s important to note that we shouldn’t hold Slayer to higher standards than we do popular male characters. Does anyone think that Walter White or Don Draper are bad characters because they are selfish and self-destructive? No, we understand that these mistakes make people, and that humanity makes characters stronger.
In this sense, Buffy’s mistakes make her prove more important: Buffy the Vampire Slayer it may be a silly comedy from the ’90s, but it has the historical elements and characters that are truly damaged by modern celebrity TV. It’s a wild combination that has helped the Slayer series remain a fan favorite for decades. Now that a Buffy revival is on the horizon, we can only hope that the new show will retain the complex characters and shady behavior that made the original series a pop culture phenomenon.
