Paper
Alright, this is SO not my best work, but I have to turn this in tomorrow morning and of course I put it off until the last minute, and this is all I was able to fit, and it's already a whole page over my limit without even putting everything I wanted to say in it.
I said I would post it on here, and I know it's not great but I didn't want to lie and say I'd post it and then not do it.
I probably won't print this out until tomorrow morning so if there are any super crucial errors please let me know! Otherwise..I was going to turn it in like this anyway, so...I'll get the grade I get.
I really enjoyed doing all of the research and learning more about feminism in Buffy, I just wish I didn't have to write a paper on it after I learned so much.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Feminism
Joss Whedon was a "Men on the Front Lines" honoree at the Equality Now event on May 15th, 2006. His acceptance speech went over seven different answers to the same question: "Why do you write these strong female characters?" The first reason he gave was because of his mother; she was strong and he surrounded himself with strong women because of her. His second answer was because of his father and step-father who realized that recognizing someone else's power does not diminish their own. The third was because the characters give people strength, not just women, but men as well. Fourth reason: "Because they're hot." Whedon's fifth answer was asking why the reporters aren't asking every other writer why they are not writing about strong women characters. The sixth was,
"Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now."
And his final answer was "Because you're still asking me that question." Whedon has created shows with strong female characters; Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. BtVS possibly has the most feminist perspectives of all his shows.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show about a young blonde in high school who was born with the potential to become a vampire slayer. One girl in each generation is chosen and given the strength and skill to fight vampires and stop the spread of evil. Once one slayer is killed, another one somewhere in the world is activated. Buffy Summers has to deal with evil that almost the whole world is oblivious to, on top of going to school and maintaining healthy relationships with her best friends Willow Rosenberg and Alexander "Xander" Harris. These three teenagers, Buffy, Willow and Xander, fight the forces of evil while dealing with feminist issues such as responsibility, power and strength.
Buffy: Buffy, being the "chosen one," is stronger and has more fighting skills that come to her naturally than many do after rigorous training. "She fights hand-to-hand and is powerful like a man, but Buffy also has an acrobatic agility and grace that cannot be easily categorized as either conventionally masculine or feminine." (Early, 2001) Buffy has these powers in order to protect the world from evil, but "At times Buffy defines herself wholly as the Slayer, and she frequently complains that she cannot have a normal life." (Chapter 1: Girl power, 2005) Unfortunately, there is no undoing what has been done and she continues doing her job for the greater good; she is constantly saving the world from all sorts of evil, and does not give up, even when it looks like there is no possible way the good guys can win.
Responsibility is something that Buffy is constantly reminded of by her watcher, Rupert Giles, and becomes a significant part of her life. She often has issues with responsibility, either by taking on too much of it, or not taking enough of it. Sometimes Buffy tries to protect the entire world on her own without the help or support of her friends. Often, her friends have to remind her that she does not have to do everything alone, even if she is the "chosen one," she can share the weight and let others help her. Buffy is the first Slayer to ever have friends helping her out; the first Slayer who wasn't alone in the fight against evil and this benefits her in more ways than one.
In the episode "School Hard," William the Bloody "Spike " comes to town to kill the Slayer, as he has killed two in the past already. When he shows up to kill her Spike says "A slayer with family and friends. That sure as hell wasn't in the brochure." Spike realizes then, that this Slayer has ties to the world which will make it much harder to take her out of it. In the essay Existentialism Meets Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bardi and Hamby comment, ""¦in some respects we all ultimately walk alone, there is also the challenge of finding the balance between independence and interrelationship"¦ one of the clearest examples of the way Whedon has used feminist principles to stretch existentialist ideas." (Davidson, 2007 pp. 108) Sometimes it seems that Buffy never finds the balance between independence and interrelationship.
In the fifth season finale, Buffy sacrifices herself in order to save her sister, her friends, and the rest of the world. The Scoobies (Buffy's group of friends) use a Buffy double they call the "Buffy-Bot" and they go patrolling in order to keep some peace in the town of Sunnydale without the protection of the Slayer. Once the summer comes to an end, Willow uses her magic to bring Buffy back from the dead. Because she died a mystical death, rather than a natural one or one caused by earthly events, it can be done. When she is brought back into the world she did what she had to: got a job, raised her little sister and resumed her duties as the Slayer, but that was the extent of responsibility she took on. When it came to punishing Dawn for doing something wrong or being the mother-type she had to be since their mother passed, she pushed most of those responsibilities onto Giles. Soon after the gang finds out that Buffy was brought back to life by being ripped out of heaven, they realize why she had been so distant. This was also Giles' cue to head back to England in order to force Buffy to take responsibility for her own life. He was her watcher and continues to teach her, even when he's not there. Having Giles move back to England makes Buffy step up and take on all of her responsibilities.
Willow: At the beginning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow is seen to be an innocent, book-wormy, nice, and normal girl. Her contributions at the beginning of BtVS were solely computer skills and ability to research, which were helpful. "Willow appears as the moral center of the group in earlier seasons"¦" (Chapter 2: Good girls, 2005) In the episode "Doppelgangland" when Buffy, Xander and Giles thought that Willow had died, Giles said, "She was the best of all of us." Xander- "Way better than me." Giles- "Much, much better." She always puts her friendships first, keeps the group together and takes her responsibilities seriously.
When acceptance letters started coming in for all of the high school students, Willow was accepted to many schools, a few of them being Oxford, Harvard and Yale. In the episode "Choices," she turned down all of them in order to stay in Sunnydale and help fight evil with her friends. "I just realized that's what I want to do. Fight evil, help people"¦I think it's worth doing. And I don't think you do it because you have to. It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in." While she attends college with Buffy, she is finally in her element. She's interested in the school, the classes, the clubs and the people; she fits in perfectly, thanks to her werewolf boyfriend Daniel "Oz" Osbourne who is a guitarist in a band that plays shows on the campus occasionally.
At the end of season two she does her first spell; re-ensouling Buffy's first love, Angel (a vampire who was cursed by gypsies with a soul, which was lost in season two when he achieved perfect happiness with Buffy). Even when Willow successfully conjures that spell, she is still not fully aware of how powerful she has become. She is timid but still excited to learn more about magic. She's always been part of the Scoobies, but from that point on she was able to help with magic, along with her computer and researching skills. Willow became the go-to girl if they needed help with anything besides physical strength.
Along with Willow being a witch, she later realizes that she is gay, after some foreshadowing in earlier episodes. She had a crush on her best childhood friend Xander since kindergarten, and was left by Oz twice, once because she cheated on him with Xander, and again because he needed to figure out who he is and to not further endangers his friends. Willow is extremely upset and tries to become more involved with her magic by joining a Wicca Group on campus. She becomes friends with Tara Maclay in the episode "Hush" where the whole town is rendered speechless, where they realize each other's power. The two practice magic together and become lovers and eventually soul mates. In the essay Uses of the Erotic, it states:
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves. (Lorde, 1984)
Willow and Tara used their magic as their source of erotic. They both found their sense of self, and had a deep emotional connection to it. They, for the most part, respected the magic and those who used it.
In season five, Willow becomes equal to Tara in the magical abilities department, and soon surpasses her. In the beginning of season six, Willow brings Buffy back to life with the use of dark magic, and this is where it starts to become an issue. Willow has proven again and again that she is helpful and powerful, but in season six her magic becomes not only an addiction, but a dangerous one. Tara is the voice of reason, and seems to be the only one who sees what the magic is doing to Willow, and to their relationship. In the episode "Tabula Rasa," Willow erases the memory of the fight they had and Tara finds out;
Tara- "You don't get to decide what is best for us, Will. We're in a relationship; we are supposed to decide together." Willow- "Okay. I'm"¦I realize I did it wrong." Tara- "You did it the way you're doing everything. When things get rough, you don't even consider the options. You just"¦You just do a spell. It's not good for you Willow, and not what magic is for." Willow- "But I just wanna help people." Tara- "Maybe that's how it started, but"¦you're helping yourself now, fixing things to your liking, including me."
Tara tells Willow to go one week without doing magic, and they will see if they can continue dating. Willow says that it's no problem and that it will be easy, but that is not the case. When no one is around she does a spell so that Buffy will forget she was ever in heaven, and Tara will forget about the fights that they had; this goes terribly wrong when it results in everyone losing all memory of who they are and what they're doing together. When all of the Scoobies get their memories back, Tara and Willow break up because the lack of trust in their relationship. Once Willow tries extremely hard and has her magic under control, they end up making up and having a wonderful day spent in bed. Unfortunately, no one lives happily ever after in a work created by Joss Whedon, and Tara is killed by a stray bullet not three feet from Willow, which was meant to kill Buffy.
Having Tara die before her eyes, right after they made up, sent Willow off the deep end. Willow loses control of all of her power and become "Dark Willow." She no longer cares about her responsibilities; all she cares about is killing the person who killed the love of her life. After almost causing the end of the world, which was saved by Xander's words, and love for Willow, she goes to England with Giles for a sort of magic rehab. ""˜This isn't a hobby or an addiction. It's inside you now, this magic. You're responsible for it.' In Giles' analysis as in a poststructuralist understanding, the idea of behaviour practice, desire and emotion cannot be separate from the notion of selfhood." (Cover, 2005) Willow eventually rehabilitates enough to come home to Sunnydale and help with yet another apocalypse, where she uses all the power inside of her to activate all of the potential slayers. In the final episode of the series, "Chosen" Buffy says, "In every generation, one Slayer is born, because a bunch of men who died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. This woman is more powerful than all of them combined."
Xander: Throughout BtVS, Xander is the only one who has no super human powers or origins at all. He is a boy who grew up with a dysfunctional family and didn't fit into any clique at Sunnydale high. He wasn't geeky enough for the geeks, or athletic enough for the jocks, and couldn't be popular no matter how much he tried. He was an outcast and stayed friends with Willow since they were in kindergarten together. Buffy is the Slayer, Willow becomes a powerful witch, same as her girlfriend Tara, Xander's Girlfriend Anyanca "Anya" is an ex-vengeance demon, Oz is a werewolf, both Angel and Spike are vampires, Buffy's little sister Dawn is a key to another dimension made up of energy put into human form, and Xander is just a human being. Even the women he is attracted to are demons, ex-demons, or women who get involved with some sort of evil that he and the Scoobies have to fight against.
Even though he is constantly surrounded by people who are in some way helpful to the cause, he's okay with taking orders from them. When Whedon created BtVS he wanted to create a show with a female icon, but ""¦ I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men that not only have no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact engaged and even attracted to the idea." (Equality Now, 2006) Xander is always around strong women, whether it be Buffy, Willow, Anya, or all of the potential slayers in season seven. ""¦ many major roles are still gendered; women still do most of the domestic labor and child rearing, even while doing full-time paid work; women and men are segregated on the job and each goes work considered "˜appropriate'" (Lorber, 1991) Xander ends up being a kind of "den mother," taking care of all of the girls, cleaning up messes made from fights, fixing the windows and keeping hope alive. Xander almost becomes the cheerleader for the team.
In the episode "Potential" Xander expresses to Dawn that he knows how she feels, "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." Xander is the one who sees everything, and even that gets taken away from him when one of the final villains puts a thumb through his eye, which forces him to wear an eye patch for the remaining episodes. Xander is an example of feminism because he is willing to follow a female leader without questioning her and is okay with being the only one without a special power, and that goes against the stereotypical gender roles.
These are just a few examples of why each of these characters has feministic qualities; there are many more reasons why they and many of the other characters can fit into the category of feminism. This show is what got me interested in feminism, and I have Joss Whedon to thank for that. Whedon, being a radical feminist, does a wonderful job empowering women and showing what they could be. He took that small, helpless girl in a dark alley and had her fight back against the stereoypes and shows the world that women can stand up for themselves. Joss Whedon once said, "If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that's what's happening, it's better than sitting down and selling them on feminism." All of his shows have male and female characters go against the stereotypical gender roles which is one way he is contributing to the feminist movement.
