Not an essay...

[frenchani]

And yet here I am, discussing Buffy again, and it's all stormwreath 's andjamalov29 's fault!

There were talks about feminism and feminist icon on their lj and it triggered that Buffy-trained muscle that has been dormant for a while, a part of my brain I thought I no longer had a use of. I toldjamalov29 that I disagreed with her views according to which Joss had made Buffy fall

Comments

[stormwreath]

For something that's not an essay that was very thoughtful and, well, long. ;-)

I don't think that the premise of BtVs is necessarily feminist.I think that depends on how you're defining feminism. If you go with "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people", then 'Buffy' - a show which takes its female protagonist seriously, shows her growing into a strong, self-confident and heroic woman respected by her friends and enemies alike - is very much feminist. It's only if you say that to qualify, a show must tackle "serious themes" about women's rights in a very self-conscious manner that questions arise. S7 does do that, and I think there was an element of Joss saying "The show's nearly over, so let's make our underlying message explicit now so we end on a positive note"; but that doesn't invalidate the earlier seasons

[penny_lane_42]

If you go with "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people", then 'Buffy' - a show which takes its female protagonist seriously, shows her growing into a strong, self-confident and heroic woman respected by her friends and enemies alike - is very much feminist.

I agree with this. That's one reason Buffy is so important to me: her story is presented as important. She's the hero of her own life. That's a very rare and precious thing.

Of course, I often want more, but I'm thankful that this never wavered (well...except for the AR, which I would argue makes her story subservient to Spike's, but that's a whole 'nother issue).

And...I'm not going to comment on the rest. :D

[frenchani]

I think that depends on how you're defining feminism. If you go with "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people", then 'Buffy' - a show which takes its female protagonist seriously, shows her growing into a strong, self-confident and heroic woman respected by her friends and enemies alike - is very much feminist. It's only if you say that to qualify, a show must tackle "serious themes" about women's rights in a very self-conscious manner that questions arise. S7 does do that, and I think there was an element of Joss saying "The show's nearly over, so let's make our underlying message explicit now so we end on a positive note"; but that doesn't invalidate the earlier seasons.I completely agree. Of course not many tv shows had such strong female lead, so of course BtVS could be seen as "feminist" since day one, but I still believe that it wasn't the biggest deal then, that Joss' hidden agenda was rather to subvert a certain horror genre, and twist common tropes, and that growing-up is the main issue the whole series talk

[aycheb]

Correct me if I'm wrong but Angel did kill hundreds of Slayers, didn't he?All we know for certain is that 206 Slayers have been killed. We haven't seen Twilight personally kill a single one of them and Angel says he didn't. The Slayers were killed either by attacking demon armies, human mobs or the human army that attacked Buffy's depowered Slayers in Tibet. The question is what Angel's role was. He is the figurehead for the Twilight movement which has been behind the human army attacks but it's unclear whether he's given the order for say the attacks on Tibet or been unable or unwilling to stop his military supporters from making them. He tells Buffy he's been trying to reduce the severity of the attacks and I think the idea that governments and the military would act to eliminate Slayer terrorists with or without Twilight's intervention is believable. However, given his superpowers and the fact that he has the ear of the anti-slayer people it's hard to believe that he couldn't have done more to stop the killings. But that's a

[frenchani]

Thanks for clarifying! It wasn't what I had come across before. I knew I shouldn't have venture out onot the comics territory! :- )

I still have a problem with the anti-Slayer thing and what it means in regard to the spell in "Chosen".

I understand that if you carry on Buffy's journey, you have to deal with the existence of hundreds of Slayers over the world and explore storylines (I know that they already did it in Angel with "Damages" but the episode was more about Angel and Spike than about the Slayer so it isn't the same) but I wish Joss had let the Buffyverse rest in peace.