This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Buffy’s message to a post-COVID world
By: []
Date: 2021-12
If you’re my age, then Buffy was around your age – the series ran for the same period as I was in secondary school, from the election of Tony Blair to the bombing of Iraq. And so we grew up with the characters. When Tara and Willow finally get together, it was one of the first lesbian kisses broadcast on US television, and it was certainly the first time I came across a same-sex relationship as just one aspect of the wider life of a major character in popular culture. The first use of the word ‘Googled’ on TV was on Buffy.
Like other major TV events for those of us who came of age around the millennium, it shaped our understanding of the world. We were told that the funeral of Princess Di – in September 1997 – is when the nation learned to cry, but we hadn’t really known the nation before that. World Cup ‘98 taught us which team we were on. Big Brother, debuted in 2000, launched reality TV, the forerunner of social media. But it was Buffy, which first aired in the UK on 30 December 1998, which talked about our generation.
The lesson in almost every episode is simple: Buffy may have superpowers, but when she tries to solve problems alone, she fails. She needs her team, her Scoobies, her comrades. While most superhero shows teach the ultimately reactionary message that power lies with a race of übermenschen, Buffy inverts the trope, showing that we all have skills to bring, and we solve our problems by working together against dark and powerful forces.
After her mother dies, Buffy’s need to get a job – first in a burger joint, then as a school counsellor – gets in the way of her world-saving. It’s an allegory for the problems with capitalist models of women’s liberation: you can’t have it all in a world that takes everything from you. Other characters struggle, too: Willow discovers magic and then battles with addiction to it; Cordelia descends through America’s class system when her dad loses his job; Xander finds purpose as a builder. The genre may be fantasy, but the show had much more contact with reality than contemporaries such as Friends.
If there’s a crux of the seven seasons, it’s the point when Buffy sacks the council of (mostly English) male ‘Watchers’ who considered themselves her boss. She realises that, ultimately, they need her, she doesn’t need them. It’s she, not them, who has the power: a clear allegory for workers – and for women – everywhere.
Buffy’s anarcha-feminist propaganda was watched by up to one in 20 households in America, and its political influence on our generation is so vast, it’s possibly the subject of more academic study than almost any other TV series in history.
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