The Feminist Filter: What's My Line? Part One

[gabrielleabelle]

How's your Saturday? Good? Good!

Let's do some feminism-type stuff!

Mission Statement:This series is intended to outline the feminist text of each episode so as to provoke and encourage open discussion. It's not so much about making value judgments about events and/or characters but about analyzing the series from a feminist framework so as to

Comments

[angearia]

As in this case, Buffy uses her nails against Kendra.WHOA. I just realized this connects to how Kendra will die -- her neck slashed by Drusilla's nail. Drusilla using her ~chick fighting style totally annihilates Kendra (which contrasts Kendra's lack of female social graces since she doesn't know how to talk to boys and doesn't even know the word "chick fight?"). And, I mean, c'mon --there's a reason claws are dangerous. It's nature's way of slashing

[angearia]

Continuing in this vein, both Buffy and Kendra are trained by Watchers/Shadowmen/Men to fight in a masculine style. But they're evenly matched in the fight though Kendra's form is perfect. To gain the upper hand, Buffy uses her nails -- this is something natural to her, but also a state encouraged socially for women

[gabrielleabelle]

I find your thoughts fantastic and would subscribe to your newsletter if, you know, I weren't already. :)

Let me sit on those thoughts for a bit. We'll go into Kendra a whole lot more in the next part, but I definitely want to get some preliminary discussion on her going now before getting to the nitty-gritty.

[angearia]

Taking it back to this episode (or well, the two-parter, I'm only jumping ahead one ep now!), we could view Buffy's use of her groomed nails as weaponizing her beauty, somewhat similar to the Slayer herself being a young women that would presumably attract vampires thinking she's easy prey. In a way, Buffy using her nails to fight is what the Shadowmen did in creating the Slayer in the first place

[ceciliaj]

There is a bit of 'splaining going on in how Buffy coaches Kendra to get in touch with her emotions

For sure, this is definitely awkward. However, it is realistic and consistent with the rest of the story that Buffy is ignorant about race -- one of the few times Willow calls her out on anything is when she talks incessantly about Christmas. This is realistic, but it's a shame there's no one around who calls it out, perhaps not least because her major intellectual authority figure is Giles, who seems just as ignorant about the U.S. legacy of racism.

[angearia]

Agreed. It's realistic, but unfortunate that the white privilege isn't challenged in the narrative.

BtVS misses a lot of opportunities to make intelligent criticism on race. It's very white feminism, I think -- overly focused on gender with a blind eye towards the intersection with race.

[eowyn_315]

It almost seems like there's a critique about Kendra's not questioning her Watcher's training, of not harnessing the power of her emotion (masculine is analytical power, amirite?) and imagination.

I think it's a statement about women's pursuit of power. There are sort of two paths for women who want power: they can try to be "one of the guys" (e.g. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign) or they can distinguish themselves as women and use that to their advantage, bringing different styles of leadership, different problem-solving methods, etc. to the table

[angearia]

Truth. That's a great reading

[angearia]

^^^ Which seems especially unfortunate within the context of American history since black women were by and large more united in fighting for the right to vote than white women.

The racial commentary doesn't really jive for me. There's so many interesting things a black Slayer could've said about rape culture in America (vampirism => sexualization of oppression), but the show never delves deep enough into a racial POV.

[eowyn_315]

Yeah... BtVS pretty much just fails at race across the board. :( And it's especially problematic framing Buffy as "more feminist" than Kendra, given the role of WOC (or lack thereof) in the feminist movement.

[angearia]

SO MUCH ~THIS~

:(

[eowyn_315]

Which is great for portraying feminine attributes as strong, but why should Kendra's disinterest/lack of education in the traditional female gender role have to mean her doom?

I think the key here is that Kendra didn't choose to be disinterested or uneducated. She was indoctrinated by the patriarchy. The Council are the gatekeepers of what Kendra is allowed to experience, and she's been denied access to any alternative. She's operating within a male concept of power because that's all she knows. And she is weaker for it.

[angearia]

Hmm, this makes sense. Somehow I feel hesitant in saying she didn't really choose, but yeah a lack of choices effectively removes her ability to choose.

I feel like her POV isn't as developed as I'd like it to be. It makes it hard to talk about her without reducing her to symbolism and archetypes.

[eowyn_315]

I feel like her POV isn't as developed as I'd like it to be. It makes it hard to talk about her without reducing her to symbolism and archetypes.

Yeah, this. Then again, given the race!fail, I'm hardly surprised.

[angearia]

So I'm experiencing this uncomfortable combo of gladness for our ~agreement, but also kinda down about it because it's depressing how hard the show fails with race portrayal.

A part of me is hoping Poco will sweep in with some brilliant Kendra commentary.

[ceciliaj]

Poco is the master of Kendra POV!