Redau mai jos un text în engelză găsit pe net şi care provine chiar dintr-o analiză a feminismului reprezentat de serialul "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Cu o precizare, pentru că autoarea a "sărit" peste amănunt: Xander o opreşte pe Willow în acţiunea acesteia de distrugere. Cei care nu cred, să cerceteze serialul.
Bewitched
Both communities (witch and gay/lesbian) are defined by
their participant’s position outside the mainstream, sharing a life
world, and participating in some aspect of politics. (Helen Berger,
quoted in Winslade, para 14)
The representation of witchcraft and the way in which it is
bound to the portrayal of lesbian sexuality is problematic in Buffy, and
crucial to a feminist critique of the series. The two factors are
closely aligned through the use of the aforementioned metaphor of
witchcraft as sexual experimentation. Configuring women as witches
and/or lesbians is an inherently politicised act, despite Whedon’s
claims to the contrary. In an interview he stated: "Our whole mission
statement was that we would bury their first kiss in an episode that had
nothing to do with it, and never promote it [ ... ] The whole reason we
had them kiss was because if they didn’t, it would start to get coy,
and quite frankly a little offensive, for two people that much in love
to not have any physicality. But the whole mission statement was, "We’ll
put it where nobody expects it, and we’ll never talk about it."
This act of marginalisation, of placing Willow and Tara
‘outside the mainstream’ is significant, for whilst Whedon is clearly
attempting to avoid accusations of exploiting "lesbian chiC, the effect
produced is in fact evidence of a patriarchal male anxiety about female
sexuality. Kisses and eroticism between Buffy and Angel, Buffy and
Spike, and Xander and Anya for example are momentous occasions in the
Buffy narrative, yet lesbian sexuality is denied this significance
afforded to heterosexual couplings. The fact that lesbian sexuality is
inextricably bound to the figure of the witch is particularly
interesting. Sexuality has always been central to the representation of
the witch in history, and this sexuality has always been recognised as
threatening to men. In the Malleus Maleficarum the witch is acknowledged
as a figure which threatens male sexuality and by extension the
patriarchal order.
Witches were credited with the power to "take away the male
organ" (262); envisioning Willow and Tara in a lesbian relationship
which is exclusive of men is simply an updated view of the ‘deviant’
woman as threatening to male sexuality. Thus the binding together of
witchcraft and lesbianism in Buffy. This is a recurring theme in the
series: the all powerful demon god Glory is portrayed as madly intent
upon world domination; Dru can handle her powers as a vampire and is
represented as a bizarre child/sexual predator hybrid; Buffy herself
always walks on a thin line between good and evil, with Kendra and Faith
playing the parts of these polar opposites. This is a politicised
statement on behalf the patriarchal order; deviant women are a threat
and must be eliminated.
The elimination of the ‘deviant’ woman is a key theme in
Buffy. Willow’s developing deviancy in the series marks her as a target
for eventual elimination. To expand upon this point, it is important to
consider the progression of Willow in the series. Purkiss refers to the
conventional view of witchcraft ‘largely formulated by men’ (32) as
being a religion based on biologically defined eras; the maiden, the
mother, the crone. A close examination of Willow shows that she passes
through each of these phases. Initially she is a maiden, naive and
innocent; significantly, in this phase she is involved in a heterosexual
relationship with Oz, and is therefore uninitiated into the ways of
‘deviancy’. Her maturation into the mother phase comes when she ‘gives
birth’ to Buffy by bringing her back to life at the beginning of season
six. Suffering physical ‘labour pains’ in her rebirthing of Buffy she
rewrites the experience of maternity. Her magickal labour pains
culminate in her spewing forth a giant snake; it is hard to avoid
reading into this an expulsion and rejection of the phallic image.
Whilst having her friends to support her, Willow essentially performs
her rebirthing ritual alone, adopting the role of both mother and
father, thereby disregarding the need for a distinct paternal figure.
The creation of life becomes a solely female experience which denies the
necessity of a male partner, and it is in this marginalising of men in
both her sexuality and her experience of maternity which marks her as
deviant, and therefore a legitimate target for elimination.
Willow is shown to eliminate herself in becoming entirely
self destructive, as it is at this point that Whedon employs the
witchcraft/drug addiction metaphor. Willow becomes unable to go through
the day without performing a spell, spells which notably go against
contemporary readings of witchcraft as a healing, regenerative female
spirituality, and are instead recognisably powerful and often harmful
acts of magick. For example, in the "Tabula Rasa" episode, Willow casts a
spell which she hopes will make the gang forget their problems; instead
they forget everything about who they are, and are consequently placed
in great danger when they are attacked by vampires. Witchcraft begins to
control Willow, and hold the potential to destroy her completely. This
notion of witchcraft as a destructively controlling force is treated
curiously ambivalently in the series.
Whedon seemingly acknowledges the feminist viewpoint that
accusations of witchcraft have been used throughout history by a
dominant patriarchal (often churchled) authority to control ‘unruly’
women. This is exemplified in the treatment of Tara by her family. Her
father attempts to control the women in his family by claiming that they
have evil witching powers which emerge in their early twenties, powers
which can only be tamed by enslaving the women in a punishing
domesticity. His claims turn out to be false, and it is made clear that
the reason her father employs this myth is a fear of the independent
autonomous woman who must be controlled. This incident represents a
valuable feminist understanding of the relationship between accusations
of witchcraft and patriarchal control. However, having exposed this,
Whedon them goes on to exert the same control over Willow; when she
becomes powerful as a woman/witch, she must b punished. Her attempts to
possess autonomous female power can only destroy and not enhance her.
Willow’s transition into the ‘crone’ phase, and all its
unpleasant associations come with the loss of her magickal ‘fertility’.
When Tara is shot dead and killed by Warren, Willow tries to bring her
back as she did with Buffy, but finds she is unable to. Despite the
transgressive nature of Willow’s fertility, in her mother phase Willow
was able to channel her power into paths of ‘normal’ femininity; when
she loses this ability, she directs this power into revenge. Her
revenge, significantly, is first aimed towards the man and his criminal
fraternity who killed Tara. The murdering of Tara is far more than a
simple shooting; it represents the destruction of a female society
(their lesbian relationship which threatens men by excluding them) by a
patriarchal order. Thus, Willow’s actions are not simply a lover’s
revenge, but are rather transformed into an attack by the woman against
the patriarchal order. The representation of Willow as deviant woman is
complete.
Unsurprisingly, the only conclusion to this is that Willow,
or at least her power, must be eliminated. The instrument of her
destruction is Buffy. As demonstrated in my consideration of the
Hellmouth, Buffy functions here once again as an agent to defend
patriarchal order. She must be patriarchy’s heroine, and protect the
existing order against the unruly woman. This final battle between
Willow and Buffy is patriarchy’s greatest victory, and the point at
which any feminist reading of the series is ultimately buried;
patriarchy operates to use women to control women. Female power is
vanquished by one who seemingly expounds it, and woman becomes her own
enemy.
In conclusion, the aim of this essay has been to subvert the
notion of Buffy as a feminist narrative. Vint suggests that: "It is
imperative that feminism find a way to connect with the cultural life of
young women, and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer strikes me as one
productive avenue through which this work can be done". (para 7)If a
consideration of Buffy can be considered to be a pedagogical exercise,
then the damaging lesson that it promotes, in both character portrayal
and underlying thematic construction, is a rejection of feminist values
in the face of patriarchal triumph. Whilst Vint acknowledges that there
are problems in reading Buff as a feminist text, I think it goes further
than that, and ultimately presents an anti feminist ideology. Through
the character of Buffy we see that female power in the series succeeds
only under the protection and guidance of male domination. Female power
operating under female authority for example, the character of Willow is
ultimately deviant and must be suppressed. The fact that Buffy "kicks
butt and so can we all" no longer seems to champion feminist ideology,
but rather exemplifies the hollow irony at the heart of Buffy the
feminist slayer.
Fragment preluat de la:
http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2003/03/06/buffy-the-feminist-slayer-constructions-of-femininity-in-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-gwyneth-bodger/