Buffy the Patriarchy Slayer

How to write social justice fiction that doesn’t suck.
By Michael Isenberg.

Girl Power. Lesbianism. Patriarchy.

There’s no doubt that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the most forward thinking shows in television history from a feminist/Progressive/social justice point of view. So how is it that it was one of the best shows ever, instead of goddamn awful like practically every other feminist/Progressive/social justice-y piece of fiction out there?

Over the course of seven seasons Buffy took on such misogynistic villains as Warren, Caleb, and Mayor Wilkins. She faced off against men who didn’t take powerful women seriously, like the werewolf hunter Cain. And she faced off against men who took powerful women so seriously that they lied and schemed to keep them in line, like the Watchers' Council and Tara’s father and brother. Indeed, we learn in the last season that one such group, the Shadow Men, started the whole Slayer line—by chaining a girl and knocking her up with demon dust. The symbolism is palpable.

Of course, by that point in the series, Buffy had long since broken free of the controlling paternalism of the Watchers’ Council; the episode where she finally tells them where to go is one of my favorites. A couple episodes that are less enjoyable, but no less significant, take on the horrific issue of violence against women. BTVS is also one of the first network shows to have major characters who are lesbians (although not the first—Willow and Tara didn’t fall in love until three years after Ellen Degeneres came out of the closet on her own show).

Buffy certainly wasn’t perfect in the SJW department. There was a noticeable absence of minority characters, although this was addressed in Season 7 with the introduction of Principal Wood and the potential slayer Rona. Better late than never. The Thanksgiving episode “Pangs” attempted to be sensitive to the plight of Native Americans at the hands of European settlers. But Buffy ends up fighting a pitched battle against the avenging Chumash spirits anyway, and Spike makes a pretty convincing speech about how he just can’t take “all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.” And the World Culture Dance in the episode “Inca Mummy Girl,” in which the students of Sunnydale High are costumed as their favorite culture—Eskimo, Geisha, Spaghetti Western, and so on—though considered a thoughtful exercise in diversity at the time, would be a cringe-worthy exercise in cultural appropriation by today's standards. Well, both episodes meant well.

Furthermore, since the series completed its run, there have been some unsettling accusations that creator Joss Whedon isn’t quite the feminist in real life that he’d like us to believe, especially with regard to his treatment of actress Charisma Carpenter when she got pregnant during her run on Angel. Still, you’d never know it from watching Buffy.

And yet, despite its social justice cred, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is so much better than Captain Marvel, Batwoman, the Disney Star Wars trilogy, Star Trek:Discovery, and all the other recent SJW dumpster fires out there. To paraphrase Max Bialystock, where did it go right?

To answer that, here then are,

6 Lessons from BTVS on how to write social justice fiction that doesn’t suck

6. No Mary Sues. There seems to be an idea in Hollywood recently that it is somehow sexist for a female protagonist to be anything less than perfect. And so, from Rey, to Captain Marvel, to Maeve on Westworld, we’ve been treated to an interminable parade of Mary Sues. The term comes from Lieutenant Mary Sue, the heroine of a 1973 Star Trek parody, "A Trekkie's Tale". TV Tropes explains the concept as follows:

The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.

The irony of all this is that many real-life women complain about the excessively high expectations that society has of them—they need to be the perfect career woman, the perfect wife, the perfect mother, always keeping their homes looking perfectly beautiful and themselves perfectly coiffed. The Mary Sue is the exact opposite of the role model they want.

Then there’s Buffy. Yes, exceptional talent comes with the Slayer package. But it doesn’t come for free—she has to train constantly to “hone her skills,” as Giles likes to say. Even when she doesn’t want to—a common occurrence in the early episodes. She’s not always a great student. On rare occasions, she even loses a fight. Win or lose, fighting takes its toll on the coif.

More significantly, Buffy never wanted this Destiny that's been thrust upon her. Many of the early episodes involve the conflict within her, and between her and Giles, as she tries to evade her responsibility to destroy unspeakable evil, in favor of her natural bent for "girly things," often lying to Giles or her mom in the process. Inevitably, the responsibilities always catch up with her.

On top of that, Buffy makes mistakes. Like the time in the Doublemeat Palace, when she becomes convinced (incorrectly) that the burgers were made out of people, and she runs amok through the restaurant, knocking hamburgers out of the hands of stunned diners.

As Buffy gains experience, and her challenges became bigger, so do her mistakes. In one of the last episodes of the series, she leads her army of potential Slayers into a battle they weren't ready for. Several of them get killed and Xander loses an eye.

Not only is Buffy not a Mary Sue, but the series even makes fun of the concept. Or to be precise, it makes fun of the male equivalent, variously called a Gary Sue or a Mary Stu. In the episode “Superstar,” the nerdy, hapless Jonathan cast a spell to make himself the best at everything. It was an entertaining takedown of the trope.

Regardless whether your character is a Mary Sue or a Mary Stu, the problem is the same—the Superman problem. The Man of Steel is so powerful that he can overcome nearly any obstacle without struggling. And that’s bad fiction; it’s boring to watch. Far better to give your character some flaws which not only raise the stakes in the conflict, but give your viewers an emotional investment in watching her overcome them.

5. Create characters who are characters, not political statements. Today’s books, movies, and TV are filled with same-sex couples. But I can’t think of any who are as endearing as Willow and Tara in BTVS. There are two reasons for this. One is the wonderful chemistry between the two actresses, Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson. The other is that they were brought together by the internal logic of the characters, and not some social justice imperative.

The writers started laying the groundwork almost a year before Tara even appeared:

In addition to this longstanding latent homosexuality, Willow knew she needed help to take her magic abilities to the next level, so she sought out other witches. Which is how she met Tara, whose family had conditioned her to think of herself as a freak. That left her shy, withdrawn, a bit frumpy. As she sang in the Season 6 musical episode,

I saw a world enchanted,
Spirits and charms in the air.
I always took for granted
I was the only one there.

So it was normal that when she found there was someone else there, she’d be drawn to her.

Suddenly I knew
Everything I dreamed was true.

It felt completely natural, not something that was forced on the viewers merely to be progressive.

After Tara died, Willow was asked how long she had been drawn to women. Her reply captures exactly what made that love story work so well. “It wasn’t women. It was woman. Just one…My mom was all proud, like I was making some political statement. And then the statement mojo wore off, and I was just gay.”

4. Don’t build up your female characters by tearing down your male characters. Buffy and Willow may have “put the grr in grrl,” but not at the expense of the men in their lives. Giles, Angel, Spike, and, in his own goofy way, Xander, are strong characters in their own right, and even when they are in conflict with Buffy, there is no question that they all care about and love each other.

The relationship between Buffy and Giles stands out in this regard. His role as mentor is a traditionally patriarchal one, a father figure for Buffy, a substitute for her actual father, who grows increasingly distant as the series progresses. And yet, contrary to the usual left-wing narrative about patriarchy, as Buffy's skills and independence grow, Giles doesn’t try to hold her back in order to maintain his control of her. Just the opposite. “It’s becoming quite obvious that Buffy doesn’t need me anymore,” he says in Season 5. “I don’t say that in a self-pitying way; I’m quite proud actually.” By Season 6 he worries that he’s become a crutch to her, and is holding her back; he returns to England in order to allow her to reach her full potential.

What a contrast to more recent movies and TV shows—Captain Marvel and Maleficent for example—where every male character is either a villain, a buffoon, or a servant to the superior female heroine.

3. Don’t preach. At least not overtly.

A lot of the social justice themes I talked about above weren’t apparent to me the first time I watched the series. Or the second or the third. I only became aware of them later on, thanks in part to The Passion of the Nerd’s excellent series of Buffy episode guides, which points them out explicitly. Nevertheless, I was absorbing them on a subconscious level. And there’s a lesson in that. If you got a message you want to get across, get your viewers so invested in your story and your characters that they don’t even notice they’re being preached to.

Besides, overt preaching violates the first rule of storytelling that we all learned in English class: Show, don’t tell.

2. Humor. No one likes the stereotype of the humorless liberal. Captain Marvel and Rey in particular have about as many laughs in them as a case of syphilis. Which is ironic because one episode of BTVS actually got laughs out of a case of syphilis. In Joss’s immortal words, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

1. A good social justice story must be, first and foremost, a good story. It might seem strange to cite Rush Limbaugh in post about social justice fiction, but bear with me. From time to time, Rush has been asked how come there’s no liberal Rush Limbaugh. His answer is that it's because everyone who tried went about it the wrong way. They were more interested in pushing a message than in crafting good radio. Which is backwards.

What’s true for radio is also true for television.

Lord knows there have been few TV shows as well-crafted as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Great characters, clever dialog (the writers are incredibly proud of that), well-choreographed violence, and in the end, good vanquishes evil. Besides, as editor-in-chief of Nerds who Read, I gotta love any show where the heroes, when they face a problem, go to the library and look stuff up in books.

And that's one final lesson that our left-of-center friends can learn from Buffy if they want their fiction not to suck. The library—not to mention Hollywood—is full of great stories and memorable characters. Rather than decolonizing our bookshelves, as a recent article on NPR called for, draw on the best that every culture, race, and religion has to offer. Including a certain blonde high school girl who "alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer."

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Nerds who Read.