Buffy the Vampire Slayer-

The television show, “Buffy the vampire slayer” would interest a feminist because the main character is a woman who is stronger than all the men on the show. The show ran for sevens seasons, I will be general when mentioning aspects of the show that relate to feminism. Let us return to the main character, Buffy, a self obsessed valley girl who gets super powers and goes out late at night, usually alone, and fights vampires. The idea of a young girl(she was supposed to be around 16-17 when the show started) running around late at night, fighting evil men and killing them by stabbing them in the heart with wooden phallic symbols seems to be the feminist message. Buffy is strong, she doesn’t need some guy protecting her.

The other female lead, Willow, is according to Buffy, the strongest character on the show. She is smarter than Buffy and she is a powerful witch. For the most part of the show, Willow was the dorky brainy girl, she eventually started dating Oz, a guitarist who becomes a werewolf and later cheats on her, the notion of the cheating man being a dog in some sense further demonstrates the feminist agenda of the show. Willow later on in the show becomes a lesbian, once again going towards the idea that women don’t need men. Willow has had two lesbian relationships on the show, one with another powerful witch and the other with slayer-in-training.

In terms of male characters on the show, we have Xander, a human who never gets any powers and develops basic fighting skills during the course of the show. In the early seasons, Xander was sex crazed and used as comic relief. Then we have Angel, a vampire with a soul who decides to help Buffy, after they have sex, he loses his soul and goes on a killing spree, but Buffy kills him. The powerful man becomes a killer after he has sex with the virgin, hrmm, sounds like a negative depiction of man. It should also be mentions that the majority of main villains for the seasons were men except for season five, were Buffy fought Glory, a Goddess, who shared a body with a man. It’s interesting to note that Glory was the strongest villain Buffy as actually fought and could only be killed in her weakened man form.