Among my many drawbacks is a certain penchant for cheesy sci-fi movies and shows. I cut my genre teeth on “Lost in Space” and “Pitch Black,” and soon decided that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was one show I really shouldn’t have missed out on. Due to the complete awesomeness of (first) Hulu and (then) Netflix, I embarked on a months-long journey filled with witty dialogue, 90’s pop culture references, and lots and lots of ass-kicking.
The appeal of Buffy is not just in the fight scenes and hunky vampires, however. Joss Whedon (the show’s creator and demi-god of geekdom) is a staunch feminist, and he had a very specific agenda in creating the show. Buffy, the eponymous hero, is a little blond girl, interested in shoes, dating, and just getting through high school with a social life and reputation intact. But she’s also the slayer, the one girl in the world with the power to staunch the tide of evil creatures pouring from the Hellmouth in Sunnydale (right under the high school, as it so happens). By the end of seven seasons, she’s stopped several apocalypses, died two and a half-ish times to save the world, and gathered around herself a close-knit group of friends willing to back her in anything.
One of the overarching themes of the show is that fighting vampires and demons and the forces of darkness in general is all a metaphor for high school and growing up, but, especially in the last season, another theme is very clear. Whedon’s all about the empowerment of women, something which, sadly, I find too many people don’t see a need for. Whedon writes, in an article from 2007,* “I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished….And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.”
Buffy and the other female characters in the show, Willow, Cordelia, Tara, Dawn, Mrs. Summers, Faith, and Anya, among others, are not expendable. Nor are they weak or manipulative. Whedon does an excellent job here of trying to redress the cultural balance, writing a hit TV show with a female lead and a heavily female cast about the endless battle of good and evil. In the last season of the show, Buffy and her friends find themselves up against what seems like insurmountable evil–the opening of the Hellmouth and the subsequent release on the world of a race of uber-vamps, endowed with iron-hard skin and a certain quality best defined as “hard to kill.” The evil mastermind behind this plan, called The First (short for “First Evil,” think platonic ideals here), is also killing off all the potential slayers around the world, hoping that by the time Buffy gets killed, there won’t be anyone able to take over the role of slayer.
And here we get into spoiler territory, so if you haven’t seen the show yet and are planning on it (as you should), I apologize. In order to save the world once again, Buffy, with the help of her friend (and witch) Willow, endows all potential slayers with full slayer powers. Young girls all over the world become strong, not through a bloody or ritualistic sacrifice–Buffy herself lives–but through a sharing and amplification of power. It is not by violence that women are empowered, but by turning towards each other, sharing in the inherent power each possesses. Buffy sees a way around the (male-mandated) lonely line of single slayers each doomed to fight and die alone, and instead of buying into the single-hero, superman myth, she chooses multiplicity and a congress of women. Which, of course, turns out to be the only way to save the day, and the world.
This tactic is a particularly female one, I believe. Men are more inclined to want to work alone, to be the tortured hero, to be the Jesus or Atlas, taking the world on his manly shoulders and suffering in silence. Women gather friends and family around them. We network, we share, heck, we even go to the bathroom together. Now, I have no idea if this is a socially-constructed gender trait, or if it’s biological, but either way it happens. And I’d like to applaud Whedon for noticing it, and noticing it through a camera. There are far too many movies made in which women are used like cars or sets–just there to pretty up the place. And that kind of treatment leaks from the screen into real life, and from real life onto the screen. And it has to stop somewhere.
*The whole thing is worth your time: http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271
books, bottles, and broomsticks 
I like this.
I just finished reading ‘Darwinian Natural Right’ (can’t remember if I’ve told you about it or not?), and the author (Larry Arnhart) dedicates a significant portion of a chapter to describing the ‘male’ and ‘female’ societal mentalities, and as memory serves (I would need to re-read the chapter to be certain), his description lines up quite well with how you’ve described Whedon’s effort in Buffy.
Whatever the case (be it socially constructed or actually part of the naturally female versus naturally male mentality), the power of community versus the power of the individual is very much worth discussing in terms of the corresponding gender (without, of course, making it such that every individual must fit within their gender’s type). How we value the ‘female’ mentality interests me. Some, I gather, argue that we must let the individualistic fall away for the sake of the communistic (ha), while others suggest a blend is worthwhile.
I imagine it depends on the scenario. Most of us don’t have to defend against a Hellmouth. 😉
It is interesting though. Most films with a crisis of that sort (that is, fantastic) place the defense in the hands of a singular individual, typically a male hero. There is usually a number of supporting characters (how interesting would it be otherwise), but the final, crucial bit stems from this main person.
Good stuff. I need to watch Buffy.
You’ve probably seen this, but in the event you haven’t, enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs