A Feminist Reading of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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Recommended: Women as victims in slasher films

A Feminist Reading of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

In numerous interviews, creator Joss Whedon has explained that the inspiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer struck while he was watching horror films and TV shows in which pretty women run away from or get killed by monsters in alleyways. Whedon claims he wanted to give this paradigmatic girl-victim a new role: that of the monster-killing hero. Whedon's explanation of his own artistic inspiration reveals at least two things about him as a film-viewer and maker: first, his description suggests his awareness of the pervasive, archetypal quality of the traditional, mainstream horror film. Second, his description rather coyly fails to account for the more marginal genre of the "slasher film," in which the pretty girl often does kill the monster in the alleyway.

Slasher films have attracted feminist academic attention in recent years, most notably from theorist Carol J. Clover. Clover's groundbreaking article, "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film," was first published in 1987 and continues to influence feminist film critics today. With some success, these critical inquiries have recuperated the genre as one that might actually indicate shifting ideas about gender roles and female agency. Whedon nods both to the "slasher" as a subgenre and to feminist film theory in the Season 3 episode, "Helpless." In "Helpless," Whedon grafts the slasher scenario onto the Buffyverse but makes significant changes, based, I think, both on feminist responses to the genre and also on his own understanding of the show's audience demographics. Though Whedon puts his title character on a continuum with the slasher's female but "boyish" victim-heroes, Buffy b...

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...er Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

___. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." Representations 20 (1987): 187-228.

Kincaid, Lisa. "Mister Furious."The 11th Hour Web Magazine (11 April 2000, http://www.the11thhour.com/archives/042000/features/fury4.html).

i Lisa Kincaid, "Mister Furious," The 11th Hour Web Magazine (Issue 11, April 2000, http://www.the11thhour.com/archives/042000/features/fury4.html).

ii Clover's "Her Body, Himself" exists as a chapter in Men, Women, and Chain Saws, but my citations are from its earlier incarnation as a journal article in Representations (Number 20: Fall 1987, pp. 187-228).

iii Though the episode's dialogue changes from shooting script to transcript, the set descriptions I found there confirmed my guesses about the atmosphere the writers/directors intended to create.

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