The Importance of Gender in Buffy, The Vampire Slayer

The Importance of Gender in Buffy, The Vampire Slayer

What is gender? The answer to that is not so simple. “Gender is what culture makes out of the ‘raw material’ of biological sex,” (Unger and Crawford, 1995). Also, there is a difference between what is gender identity and what is a gender role; a difference which seems to be even more difficult to differentiate between than the words “gender” and “sex”. Media and other parts of our culture seem to believe they know the difference, yet up until a certain period in time, the same stereotypical characters were portrayed and used as role models for others in most media. Women characters being the helpless victims, while the strong men would come to save them (including television shows such as Miami Vice or Three’s Company). Today there is a whole slew of shows and movies, which are redefining and re-categorizing the stereotypical language in relation to gender. One such television series is Buffy, The Vampire Slayer (starring Sarah Michelle Gellar). And although it may seem like a typical teen-angst show, and the main character is a “whiny, rich” girl who fights demons , many people believed it would be exactly like the film (of the same name) which came out five years before the television show first aired in 1997. The film (starring Kristy Swanson) was trite and “airy”, and yet the television series proved those non-believers wrong. In a stereotypical world within the culture that the show represents, Buffy is doing a man’s “job”. She is fighting creatures double her size, and killing them. She is aggressive, outgoing, and determined. Words which are not “normally” used to describe women (without, of course, the word “bitch” trailing right behind them). In other cultures, women being the more aggressive and “take-charge” kind of person is the “norm”, but because we are living in a society, a culture, where even with the whole women’s suffrage being long passed, many people would still like to see women behave as dainty, quiet, and passive characters. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer has taken the issue of “normal gender roles and behavior” and switched them around, allowing the women to be more aggressive, having most of the power and ability, while the men take on the more passive role, watching from the “sidelines”, or at least simply trying to help. Although, at times, the stereotypical views of how a...

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...dornment versus utilitarian dress, attention to achievement versus to romance).”

Blechner believes that if we change the metaphors, change the stereotypes, the reality can be changed. So, when Angel becomes an angry and vengeful vampire, it won’t be a comparison to men and their masculinity, but instead an expression of what happens to him when he gets too excited. And Buffy will understand that she does not need to dress a certain way to please her man. She should only be pleasing herself. Brown’s theory also reflects the same idea as Blechner’s theory. Brown believes that if the stereotypes of sexual orientation are dismissed, and looked into with a much less biased view, that a new reality will form in the study of human behavior. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer is a metaphor for the beliefs and views (on gender roles and identity) of our society and culture in today’s world. But it also presents a metaphor for what the future should bring into how we (as a society) see males and females, and their behaviors with each other and within themselves, without the wall of stereotypical beliefs that are preventing both sexes as a whole from “slaying the demons and the vampires”.