Still thinking about the Buffyverse and how a key creator of something so beloved could be such a shit, very much along patriarchal lines -- which bounced off that essay about patriarchy & Covid forcing women out of the workforce -- so, a few thoughts --

The Buffy creator in question is just a couple of years older than I am, and I believe we probably enjoyed similar TV when growing up. You know, stuff like Avengers reruns, Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman. Sexy action heroines. Gorgeous women who could kick your ass.

In fact, lately I've been watching Bionic Woman reruns, and even though the show is cheesy as heck, I still love Jaimie Sommers the character, and she reminds me of Buffy, actually, quite a bit.

Her desire to have a normal life, but the way she keeps getting pulled into spy stuff? Her sense of humor? Her relationship with her "handler" Oscar Goldman? All extremely Buffy.

Fictional sexy action women are kind of an interesting question re: feminism, because they both do and do not challenge patriarchal power structures.

For example, James Bond, the series, hardly feminist by any stretch, still full of sexy action women -- but it's not their show, so they get bested (and bedded) by Bond.

On their own shows, the sexy action women get to win. But, of the shows I mentioned, the only one with overtly feminist content was The Bionic Woman (probably because of WHEN it was made) --

And that show LOVED to do things like make her pretend to be a showgirl or make her pretend to be a beauty contestant, or make her fight Charlies' Angels-esque "Fembots"

Sexy action women -- historically, in our patriarchy-dominated entertainments -- have all these ways in which they're being pulled back into patriarchal compliance.

BTVS found a way to effectively *dramatize* that tension, in the form of Buffy's relationship with the Watchers' Council & the "rules" of being a slayer.

This set the show up to have a fairly feminist central metaphor.

But I don't think it's because a certain Buffy creator set out to create a feminist show. He just liked sexy action women.

I mean, seriously, BTVS is a lot like if you took The Bionic Woman, made it vampire stuff instead of spy stuff, improved the scripts a LOT, and gave Jaime Sommers a cool best friend.

IT EVEN HAS FEMBOTS PEOPLE

So, you kind of accidentally stumble into creating a strongly feminist show, people notice, start lauding you for it -- what do you do?

Well, you're an egomaniac, so you bask. You play it up. If people want to adore you for something, you are ready to be adored.

But even before it started to come out that a certain BTVS creator was a shit, it was obvious that he wasn't particularly a feminist. I saw him at SDCC several times and when feminist topics came up it was obvious that he was not well-versed.

I cut him slack for it at the time -- I assumed he was an emerging feminist, that is, people told him he created a feminist show & he was like "I did what now? Oh, okay, better read up."

And I think BTVS itself was helped along by having key female creators like Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson, and also by *being Buffy's show*

Like, if you're just going by some id-derived urge to create sexy action women & make them really powerful & then punish them, if you're doing that to the protagonist, the viewpoint character, it makes for good drama.

But then we get to Angel. It's HIS show and Cordelia is filling the cool best friend role. The feminism wheels start to come off. Even at the time, some of my Buffy-watching friends noticed that there was a disturbing misogynistic undercurrent in Angel the show.

It was still a pretty good show, though, overall.
No way to spin it as feminist though. Firefly? Sort of... OS Star Trek levels of feminism, maybe? Which isn't nothing, but it's not worth giving people awards over.

And then we get Dollhouse. Which I thought sounded like a terrible premise when it was described at SDCC & never changed my mind. I watched it. I even liked aspects of it. BUT, again, there's not a feminist aspect to it --

Not unless you're being really generous with the idea that "depicting a very abusive patriarchal practice as bad" is feminist, which... sometimes when you depict the "bad" practice with a little too much relish, it's... you know, you're getting into Seth McFarlane territory.

Which leads me to two points. Point one, we live in such a massively fucked up patriarchy that if a show like BTVS comes along, with even *that* amount of feminist content, we devour it like starving people in a desert.

Point two, we are so desperate that we sometimes give men WAY too much credit for making even the slightest gestures toward feminism/anti-patriarchy.

Point three, after *becoming* accidentally a feminist icon, a certain Buffy creator could've learned something about feminism & become a true ally, but deep down he still just wanted to play around with sexy action women & that's what he did.

And I guess that's the end. BTVS is still one of my all-time favorite TV shows, but I realize now, it was a bit of a fluke. A happy accident. The Bionic Woman with better scripts.