While watching Incan Mummy Girl, I am reassured that my love for the Buffinator has not been in vain. Sure, in the first scenes, Buffy seems a far cry from fulfilling feminist principles. She finds museums boring and seems to lead Zander on in a hopefully unintentional way. Yet with the introduction of Incan Mummy Girl, we can see a juxtaposition that allows for a deeper analysis of feminism. Incan Mummy Girl begins her entre into the episode through the retelling of her story by a curator in the museum (a museum without security, alarms or plexiglass, apparently). A 16-year-old princess, she has been selected to die in order to save her people from the underworld, evil spirits, the usual drill, etc. While my prior experience with Buffy reminds me that Buffy too, did in fact die in the first season, I find the difference between the characters telling. Buffy, like Empanada, (am aware that that might be an entrée at Taco Bell and not exactly be her name) has been chosen for a role in order to protect her people. Yet Buffy’s role as slayer lacks the passivity of the Old World Inca Mummy Girl. Instead of being led calmly to her symbolic death, Buffy instead faces demons head on and assumes a traditionally masculine role of protection. Empanada, on the other hand, takes on first the traditionally passive female role of self-sacrifice (as say, a mother might do for her children) and then gradually reverts to another female stereotype: the seductress.
Empanada, it seems, becomes representative of traditional female roles in literature. A princess, she embodies both the tragic heroine as well as the evil vixen role. Buffy, on the other hand, the perky California blonde, represents Joss Whedon’s break from the prescribed roles of women. Sure, Buffy is beautiful, blonde and occasionally vapid, but she transcends traditional gender roles with her physical prowess and capability. She becomes a hybrid of traditional female and masculine roles, and unlike Empanada, gets to keep her arms in the end. What is more girl power than that?
As much as this post killed me a little bit reading it (*Ampata, and more importantly, *Xander, not Zander) I really liked something that you said:
ReplyDelete"Instead of being led calmly to her symbolic death, Buffy instead faces demons head on and assumes a traditionally masculine role of protection."
I think it is really cool to juxtapose the slayer with virginal sacrifices from ancient times. Looking ahead to the fourth and final seasons of Buffy, where she has to explore the power of the first slayer to understand her own power, we learn that sometimes things are forced upon girls, and though it is for the good of the world, it doesn't make it any less horrible. In a way, it is a violation, and violation is a very feminine thing, where powerful men force a girl to die, or in this case fight, to protect their society. The selection process is essentially random, and it makes Buffy seem pitiable and weak, which is not how we are used to seeing her. I think it is important to look at her defeat of the Mummy as a metaphor for her crushing the weakness and pity and rising above it to face and embrace her fate.
As a Hispanic Studies major, I should probably clarify that the whole "Empanada" thing was a joke. I do know her name is not the same as the delicious meat pastry I was hungry for while writing. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clarifying about the Zander/Xander issue, though. Too cute a character to get his name wrong.
Nice Empanada joke.
ReplyDeleteI found your insight into the differences between Buffy's and Ampata's use of powers well-done. It's easy to see Buffy, this stereotypically looking female, as endowed with masculine power (and that's where her feministic representation comes from)—but I wasn't sure as to Ampata, who even took a man's name. Your contrast, declaring her use as stereotypically literarily female makes sense, allowing for the fact (Byers didn't go into this much) that females have historically been allowed power, if that negative type of the seductress or manipulator.