Femininity And Buffy

The specific slant found within the program formula for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (BTVS) is unique in both film and television: the lead character is a female world-saver who belongs to no government organization, who seldom relies on men for help, who is not an androgyne and who has a curfew. The series was created and continues to be meticulously overseen by Academy Award winning writer Joss Whedon. Whedon writes for his female characters with particular care to maintain the validation of the feminist viewpoint. Until feminists quit taking pot shots at each other and arrive at a mutually agreed upon definition of feminism, and for the purposes of this paper, "feminism" will be considered the empowering of the female who takes control of her life to the extent that such control directly affects her well-being and future. Ignoring the psychological and mythological doublespeak used by many feminists, this paper will discuss the manner in which Whedon and his cadre of carefully chosen writers deal with feminist issues vis-à-vis character development. Buffy has another side, however - she is a good girl (more or less) who minds her mother (unless a house rule conflicts with her slaying duties) and keeps her amazingly frilly and feminine room neat. Buffy misses her father, to the extent that a rejection by her father was manifested as her worst nightmare coming true. She turns to Giles, her Watcher, for guidance and sometimes regrets it. He lectures her on her slayer duties - "Buffy, when I said you could slay vampires and have a social life, I didn't mean at the same time" - until she must resort to slyness just to get a night off. Feminists decry feminine-wile manipulation but several female characters on BTVS are guilty of just such guile; Buffy uses it on Giles when she wants a night off; Jenny, Giles' love interest, uses it to help him come out of his shell; Willow, Buffy's closest friend, uses it only when she is desperate, and Cordelia, the trophy-wife-in-training, uses it indiscriminately and, oblivious to her shallowness, with great enthusiasm. What absolves the first three from censure is that they contrast this deception with true feminist attributes they are in control of their lives and use their femininity only when their men are too dense to comprehend any other method of getting their point across. As Buffy's friend, Xander once said, "I'm a teenager - linoleum turns me on!" Buffy sometimes envies Cordelia, who practices feminine wiles in order to snare a handsome, rich husband. Cordelia, as Sherrye Henry says some females do, adheres to the belief that "men vie with each other for honour, wealth, and good looking wives. However, both times Buffy dons ultra-feminine gowns, she realizes that she prefers the power of being a slayer. Recovering from a spell in which she was a helpless Southern belle; she immediately bests a vampire and says, "You know what? It's good to be me." Interestingly, the gender of the slayer is not only relevant but absolutely vital to Joss Whedon's Buffy. His scenario suggests that every Slayer throughout history has been female. Vampires are masculine in essence; they represent penetration, the "ineffable power of patriarchy, striking suddenly, appearing from nowhere" as in the Oedipal myth mentioned in No End To Her by Martha Nochimson. Vampires overpower and focus on their goals to the exclusion of what is going on around them and this is their fatal flaw when meeting a female slayer. This results from the specific Slayer ability and supposed weakness of Whedon's original, cinematic Buffy - she experiences menstrual cramping when a vampire is near and can thus be warned. By the same token, vampires, having heightened senses, can seek her out easily during her period. In transferring the role to television he has played down that part somewhat but retains unbroken the chain of female slayers. In television, women are seldom portrayed as classic heroines,

exact counterparts of male heroes. Instead, they are at best classified as victims or decoys who, because of their limited abilities and intelligence, are dependent upon masculine heroics. Even those who demonstrate exceptional abilities are usually, in the end, reliant on the male. What heroines there are usually work for government or law enforcement agencies, patriarchal institutions - Emma Peel, Laura Holt, Nikita. Cinema is voyeuristically male and objectified females are what they watch. Feminist/critic Linda Williams contends that horror films are male oriented because the female victim is being punished for `looking,' the exclusively male prerogative. Much is made of the castration theory, that women are underpowered because they lack a penis; Buffy, however, has her stakes to compensate, one of two of the show's phallic symbols - the other being the penetration of the fangs. The historically prevalent definition of masculinity is linear, etching a "clean masculinity" against a murky feminine concept. BTVS treads a fine line between a linear narrative and the feminine perspective - the male solvers are satisfied by each story's conclusion and the female philosophers who resist plot closure are satisfied by the exploration of motive, emotion and consequences. There are few female vampires because the vampire ethic is so masculine, overwhelming and penetrating. The one major female vampire in BTVS is the most dangerous of all, we are led to believe, because she is mad. Once she regains what passes for sanity in the unread world, however, we see that she remains dangerous. The lesson is that she is simply one bad dude, regardless of gender. Spike, one of BTVS's most endearingly nasty vampires, says of the weapons he's holding: "I just like them. They make me feel all manly." There is little resemblance between these vampires and Anne Rice's "brat prince," Lestat. In "School Hard," Spike ponders his defeat at Buffy's hands: "A slayer with family and friends - that sure as hell wasn't in the brochure." Wendy Kaminer, a noted feminist, says that nature "doesn't tell us what roles men and women should be... allowed to play and what rights they ought to enjoy" and Buffy would agree. For all her confident talk, Buffy is hardly in the vanguard of the feminist movement. She runs like a girl, arms akimbo, and legs splayed, and most definitely defies Kaminer's image of "female machismo." She is no "Bond-in-a-bra" with bulging muscles ala Xena and Wonder Woman. She does not gladly embrace her destiny; she is brought literally kicking and screaming into a lifestyle of karate chops, cross-bows and wooden stakes. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan will be handing her no awards. Her theme song will not be "I Am Woman," Helen Reddy's anthemia call to all mammals of the female persuasion; her theme would be "Girls Just Want to Have Fun". She does, however, occasionally find great fun in dispatching evildoers and at those times we see the true heroine - fully female and fully lethal, infinitely more deadly than the male. She screams at the Master, her arch-rival: "You that aped about hell? Go there!" When Principal Snyder says, "Who do you think you are?" she snaps back, "I'm the one who knows how to stop them." and when her vampire-lover Angel tells her she must trust someone, she responds, "I trust me!" Her defiance is reminiscent of Carolyn Trochman's proud quote: "I don't need anybody or anything to tell me who I am, what I am capable of doing." By endowing Buffy with extra-ordinary strength, agility, healing ability and sensory perception, the writers may appear to imply that, to compete with men (vampires), Buffy needs more than average female attributes; this is not to be considered a putdown of women but rather the appreciation that there is, regardless of the conflicting philosophies of Nochimson and Burkett, a physical strength disparity that is exacerbated by a vampire's superhuman strength. Whedon emphasizes Buffy's training and feminine instincts instead. Males have gleefully pointed out this gender gap ever since Freud's famed "Anatomy is

destiny" discourse; Buffy eliminates it to the point that she often rescues the men in her life - her Watcher, her friend and even her lover. The villains, whether human or demon, are principally male and always defeated; an interesting twist. Buffy has a few decidedly non-feminist lines: "Halloween's a perfect chance for a girl to get sexy and wild without repercussions," for example. Her portrayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar, probably also would fail to make a top-20 feminist list. In a statement guaranteed to raise hackles in boardrooms and bordellos, she says, "Feminism sort of has a negative connotation. It makes you think of women that don't shave their legs." Manchester Guardian writer Carolyne Ellis maintains that "television has taken two genders and made one and a half. In what used to be the proactive, strong, capable, attractive male parts have all been given to women" and claims that what would have been female roles have been given to male characters, making them "pathetic little creatures." Ellis denounces this trend, claiming that "Feminism was not about making women into imitation men...." and this is exactly what Joss has avoided; he has allowed Buffy her femininity. Joss Whedon oversees the entire look of BTVS and, as Nochimson says, "exerts the most influence on the... tone of a show." Nochimson maintains that Freud's masculine `uncanny' concept is terror that seems familiar; the feminine `uncanny' suggests that something horrible "lurks beneath the surface of the familiar." Whedon uses the latter by basing much of his writing on his own teenage years and the horrors of high school. The backdrop of high school corridors contrasting with the violence of the demons intensifies the horror. Sunnydale is situated over the Hell mouth, which spews forth demons with great regularity, possibly indicative of Whedon's perception of those teen years. Diane M. Meehan says that having more women writers has resulted in more sensitive female portrayals, and yet Joss Whedon is most definitely a male - one who has created a believable heroine that tangentially, as she slays vampires, also deals with many women's issues Whedon showcases the worst of male chauvinism in a scene from "Inca Mummy Girl". Oz: "You're just impressed by any pretty girl that can walk and talk." Devon: "She doesn't have to talk." According to Nochimson, the cinematic male hero is `interrupted' when a female appears on the scene and his role is to "put [an] end to her intrusion...." [Interpretation: Solve her problem so that he can return to his guy activities]. Buffy rejects this feminine role of "object" and moves from the silence of the (usually female) object to the (usually male) language of the subject. She thus obliterates the original feminist belief that, because of the very gentleness that allowed them to be victimized, women were superior to men. In BTVS, there is no hero and therefore no oedipal association of mastery. Both Giles and Xander try but fail, and Angel is too ephemeral and quixotic to qualify. The current season shows us a more mature Buffy. She has been sobered by a devastating love loss and her wardrobe (fewer early-Valley-slutgirl outfits) and demeanour (testing well on her Sates) reflects this. As Buffy softens, Willow begins to revel in her new-found skills as a computer genius, researcher and witch-intraining, controlling events and taking charge when need be. Her character began as an "everywoman" persona that metamorphosed into a Jewish liberal feminist whose belief in her abilities is growing exponentially. This character growth signifies a well-conceived creative concept and execution. This critically-acclaimed, multi-layered series demonstrates that quality needn't be sacrificed in order to put an intriguing idea before an audience and that a heroine can carry a show if the part has sufficient depth. Two additional slayers have been introduced on BTVS. Kendra, who arose when Buffy was technically dead for a few seconds, and Faith, who was called forth when Kendra was killed. Each claim certain feministic traits; Kendra was all

business, and Faith is the party animal, taking little very seriously. The Whedonesque writers have made it clear that a heroine needn't be a buffed up, Jackbooted Linda Hamilton type in order to function in a man's world but that she did need to take her calling seriously. There will be feminists who cry, "But she shaves her legs and loves pretty clothes!" and therefore is not a feminist; there will be those who cry, "But she's behaving like a virago!" and therefore is not a feminist. Buffy will ignore the cries of those who represent the hard-core letter of the feminist law and the laughs of those who embody the more liberal, fun-loving aspect of the credo and instead choose to represent the conflict, the strengths and the emotion, the very spirit of feminism.

Biographical Sources and End Notes references: Burkett, E. (1998), The Right Women: A Journey Through the Heart of Conservative America, New York: Scribner Butler, G. (1994), Television: Critical Methods and Applications, Canada: Wadsworth Publishing Co Cook, P. (1985/96), The Cinema Book, London: BFI Meehan, M. (1983), Ladies of the Evening: Women Characters of Prime-Time Television, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press Inc Segal, L. (1999), Why feminism? Oxford: Blackwell Henry, S. (1994), The Deep Divide: Why American Women Resist Equality, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co Nochimson, M. (1992), No End to Her, California: University of California Press Oakley Newcomb, H. (1994), Television: The Critical View, New York: Oxford University Press Related Websites Feminist Theory Website (n.d.) [online] http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/enin.html