After reading the peer-reviewed paper, I began to think about Buffy’s feminist implications and specifically the other women in the show not Buffy. Like Buffy, Ampata was chosen to be a sacrifice. She was told that she alone could save her people. According to the myths, the Incans chose a beautiful teenage girl to be buried alive to appease the gods. As Ampata hints at, it took an extraordinary amount of courage for the sacrifice to fulfill her “destiny”. There is no mention of any male character in the myth, heroic or otherwise, only a girl. I believe that this is a reflection of the feminist movement of the 20th century. The same implications cannot be said for Carmilla, written in the 1872, in which Carmilla is discovered by the Baron and the doctor. Laura is not a heroine, but rather a victim saved by the older men. The strong female character is rather the villain of the story, Carmilla. Carmilla, however, fulfills the Western stereotype of the female, tempting and eventually destroying innocents. A superficial reading of Carmilla shows Carmilla as an evil creature playing with her food before she eats it. A deeper reading show Carmilla as someone looking to reconnect with her humanity by befriending Laura, but if nothing else, Carmilla’s need for blood outweighs her desire to live with Laura.
The interesting problem is that Ampata becomes like Carmilla. She sucks the life from the innocent men, like Carmilla sucks the blood from her victims. At first she resists taking Xander’s life, seemingly because she wants to live happily in love with him. When he comes between Ampata and her chance to regain life, however, she, like Carmilla, chooses to kill her love to live more. The strange thing is even after watching the episode once, the viewers still sympathize with her for being a strong character whose youth was stolen from her. Her heroic, feminist character makes her more favorable to the audience, even if that person existed 500 years ago. Carmilla is portrayed in such an unfavorable light that it is hard for the audience to sympathize with her.
Amelia, you make some really interesting points here, but I really liked Erin's post in which she makes a compelling argument for Carmilla as a feminist text. If you haven't already, you should definitely check it out.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I concede that seeing Carmilla as a feminist, especially since the setting of that particular story wasn't much concerned with feminism, I've noticed that no one has recalled the brief story of Carmilla when she was human. Young, in love, victimized. This alone tends to elicit my sympathy for her, as she did not have a father who adored her to the point of a)noticing and b)attempting to save her from an unworldly terror.
ReplyDeleteI think that you made a really interesting point comparing the characters of Carmilla and Ampata in their need for taking human life and the way that they are portrayed in each example. Although both are very beautiful and attractive women, Carmilla's beauty is shown in a negative way, in the form of a seductress. Meanwhile, Ampata is seen as this beautiful and mysterious foreigner who just wants to fit in. The subtle differences in the way that each girl is described alters the reader/viewer's perception and attitude towards the character. Carmilla's feminine attributes are seen as evil, while Ampata is seen as victimized. Even though Carmilla's story is as a victim, she isn't described as one at all, therefore, as the reader, we only see her beauty as a negative quality.
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