A Poststructuralist Analysis of Gender Roles and Identity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Honors College 5-2013 Staking Out Gender: A Poststructuralist Analysis of Gender Roles and Identity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Patrick Pittis University of Maine - Main Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors Part of the Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons Recommended Citation Pittis, Patrick, "Staking Out Gender: A Poststructuralist Analysis of Gender Roles and Identity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (2013). Honors College. 100. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/100 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STAKING OUT GENDER: A POSTSTRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS OF GENDER ROLES AND IDENTITY IN BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER by Patrick J. Pittis A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Degree with Honors (Communication) The Honors College University of Maine May 2013 Advisory Committee: Diane M. Keeling, Ph.D., Associate Professor Communication and Journalism Kristin M. Langellier, Ph.D., Professor Communication, Women’s Studies Eric E. Peterson, Ph.D., Professor Communication, Mass Communication Jessica P. Miller, Ph.D., Associate Professor Philosophy David Gross, Ph.D., Interim Dean, The Honors College at UMaine Abstract My aim in writing this thesis was to show that, contrary to the underlying themes of most critical approaches to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is more to be gained by approaching the series from a poststructuralist, postmodern feminist perspective, an approach that is aligned with the works of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. From this approach, one can see that the show’s rhetoric suggests gender is an unfixed, discursively constructed phenomenon, rather than a static oppositional masculine/feminine binary. The show’s subversive rhetoric is indicative of its agency, which can also be identified by the impact BtVS has had on the popular culture landscape. In my thesis, I first analyze the poststructuralist aspects of the show’s content, such as the nontraditional gender and sexual performances of the characters Buffy, Willow, and Xander, before then tracing the agency of the show. This includes an analysis of the agency within the content of the rhetoric, such as a subversion of traditional rhetorical binaries, as well as the agency of the form of the series, whose long-form serial narrative nature and subversive character work create a novel discursive structure that is still used today. Ultimately, the rhetoric of the show creates space in society for traditionally marginalized performances of identity, subtly pushing society towards a greater acceptance of diversity. iii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Page 1 CHAPTER 1 – “I’m Like A Superhero or Something” Page 17 A Brief History of Traditional Gender Roles Page 18 Feminine and Feisty Page 23 Overcoming Patriarchy Page 29 Giles – From Patriarch to Compatriot Page 33 Overcoming The Council Page 40 Fighting the Unfightable Page 50 Shared Strength – Subversion of Patriarchal Hierarchy Page 53 Buffy’s Identity Formation and Growth Page 56 CHAPTER 2 – “Power. I have it; they don’t. This bothers them.” Page 59 Exploring Agency Page 63 Power In Action Page 68 Self-Confidence/Courage Page 69 Killing Demons & Fighting the Forces of Darkness Page 78 Protecting Others Page 83 Sexual Activity as Power Inducing Page 92 Equalizing Gender Page 111 CHAPTER 3 – “You know, certain stereotypes are not very empowering” Page 113 Agency As Disruption Page 114 Us and Them – Subversion of the “Other” in BtVS Page 117 Masculine/Feminine Page 118 iv Human/Monster Page 124 Good/Evil Page 133 CHAPTER 4 – “This is the real world now. This is the world we made...” Page 149 Buffy the Genre Slayer Page 150 “The Weight of The World” – Buffy’s Impact on Popular Culture Page 159 The New “Normal” Page 165 CONCLUSION – “Where Do We Go From Here?” Page 167 REFERENCES Page 174 APPENDIX A – List of BtVS Episodes Cited or Analyzed Page 178 APPENDIX B – A Chronology for the Confused, the BtVS Timeline Page 180 AUTHOR’S BIO Page 184 1 INTRODUCTION The shot opens on a long, dark alley. We hear soft footsteps and see a shadowy form emerge. It is a young woman, slight build, obviously tense as she steps into the darkness. Then we hear another noise, separate from her steps – a rustling noise that tells us she is not alone. The scene is a familiar one, and from the context it is fairly easy for the audience to guess what will happen next. Anyone who has ever watched a horror movie could tell you – the pretty young woman always dies first. That is, until Joss Whedon decided to turn the cliché on its head with his character Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Its first incarnation, the 1992 movie by the same name, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was unsuccessful. As Joss Whedon has put it, “I had written this scary film about an empowered woman, and they turned it into a broad comedy. It was crushing” (Havens, 2003, p. 23). Luckily, Whedon was not to be stopped. What followed was practically unheard of in Hollywood – just five years after the failed movie, Whedon was able to resurrect the franchise in the form of a television show, itself a midseason replacement that almost never saw the light of day. But the juggernaut was launched. By the second season, the show had accumulated a strong following, jumping up to 5.3 million viewers from the 3.7 million viewers it found in its first season, and was well on its way to becoming a cult sensation (Internet Movie Database, n.d.). The show’s success was marked by its seven-year run, the success of its spin-off series Angel, and its evolution into other forms of media – notably novels, comic books, and video games. This success makes the show incredibly accessible to public and scholastic audiences alike, partially because it is easy to find (both in syndication and on internet sites such as Netflix), but also because it has significant relevance to modern popular 2 culture. As most scholars stick mainly to the text of the television incarnation, I will do the same. The show focuses on Buffy Summers, a normal teenage girl until the day she is told she is The Chosen One, also known as The Vampire Slayer. With this title comes the responsibility to protect the world from demons and other creatures of the night. Unlike the long line of Slayers that came before her, Buffy is reliant upon her relationships with her friends (collectively referred to as The Scooby Gang) as well as her mentor, The Watcher named Giles. The show often features tensions that arise between Buffy’s calling and her desire to be an ordinary girl with ordinary relationships, but frames these tensions in the context of a “monster of the week” serial format, with novel long-form narrative arcs. The series ran for seven seasons, each season featuring a distinctive emotional arch for the characters, allowing the writers and production team to create fully realized, three-dimensional characters. No matter what form it takes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer continues to be a story about “one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer” (BtVS, various episodes). Not unreasonably, this framing has led many scholars to explore Buffy as a feminist icon – embodying at once the feminine ideal as well as using her strength and power to subvert the view of the female as weak and without any personal power. Indeed, Whedon has revealed “the very first mission statement of the show, which was the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it” (Gottlieb, 2002). Though I feel that more can be gained by examining Buffy the Vampire Slayer from a postmodern, poststructuralist feminist perspective, it is nevertheless essential to establish some grounding in early 3 feminist and poststructuralist critical theories before exploring the full nature of the work. And in order to do that, we must begin with the most basic social concepts distinguishing males and females: sex and gender. Historically, sex and gender have had fairly rigid social and structural definitions. Many of these views sprang from biological notions of identity, an approach with certain inherent weaknesses, in that it tends to establish operational definitions of gender through inherently reductionist and essentializing theoretical and methodological strategies and practices... [situating] gender differences in a static bipolar opposition of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’ (Lengel & Martin, 2009, p. 4) This is, at best, a flawed view of gender and identity. There certainly tend to be physical and biological differences between men and women, but these disparities do not preclude women exhibiting the strength and power traditionally associated with the male, nor do they preclude men from utilizing nurturing, care-based methods of interaction as is commonly identified among females. In fact, “many writers in cultural studies and other humanities have argued for the complete plasticity of sex and gender... [and for] understanding masculinity and femininity as cultural constructions” (Barker, 2003, p. 285). Though this revised understanding of gender will be critical in my analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (hereafter BtVS), the distinction between male and female is grounded in very real biological fact. Since “biochemical evidences suggests that we are not blank sheets at birth... [and] cannot remake ourselves into anything we want to,” it would be irresponsible to completely ignore the intrinsic differences between men and women (Barker, 2003, p.