In reading “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Next Generation of Television,” I was drawn to the parallels I saw in both “Inca Mummy Girl” and Dracula. Specifically, I was interested in the body problem that Michele Byers proposes; my attraction to this idea could be in part because that’s what I wrote about for my last blog post.
One visual memory I have of “Inca Mummy Girl” is the scene during the dance, in which Willow is huddled in her parka feeling lonely and uncomfortable. I think this image reconciles what Byers perceives as a tension between the possible feminist agenda inherent in Buffy and Sunnydale’s lack of cultural diversity. Willow feels physically confined in her costume – not only is it unattractive (at least, by conventional standards), but the “un-sexiness” of it also affects her emotional well-being. Byers writes that the women in Buffy “represent a spectrum of possibilities for contemporary womanhood that includes superior intelligence, physical strength, the desire for relationship, the quest for independence, and the refusal to be dominated circumscribed, or limited in action and mobility [my emphasis].” Because Ampata’s presence accentuates Willow’s unusual choice of costume, surely Willow feels immobile on several levels.
But what’s interesting to me is that Ampata felt the same thing, too; she was so happy to get out of that coffin and enter into a dynamic physical state. When she first explores Buffy’s room, I noticed how delicately she maneuvered herself and touched Buffy’s belongings. Ampata revels in bodily freedom, while Willow is struggling to recover it. I think that because Ampata is viewed as the “other” in this episode (she’s of a different ethnic background and it turns out she’s a succubus), the viewer sees that both women essentially want the same things for themselves. Maybe diversity becomes something of a non-issue, since Willow and Ampata are more alike that we think.
I also wanted to comment on the similarity I saw between Byers’ discussion of feminism in Buffy and our class discussion of sexism in Dracula. I think Byers has it right – does the show have to be all or nothing? Does Dracula have to be all or nothing? Texts are often much more complex than they seem, and I think reducing either the show or the book to a label would be unfair.
Allison, I tend to agree with your comparison between Willow and Ampata (IMG for short). However, I feel as though both characters subscribe to the male-formulated ideals of beauty. Willow, an intelligent girl, cannot be a well-adjusted person so long as she is considered unappealing to the male population. When Oz wants her and not Ampata, he finally seems to validate her as a well-rounded person rather that a pitiable waif, even though she already exhibited both intellectual and spiritual prowess. Ampata too must wait to be freed from her coffin by a man, and is then trapped in "coffin" in which she is forced to use her body to maintain her physical freedom. Her freedom in the world comes at the cost of her body, and she, much like Willow, is dependent on men for validation in not only our eyes, but in existence.
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