Essay The Importance of Gender in Buffy, The Vampire Slayer

Gender derives its formative meaning from culture and societal values, it is not a universal entity as there are various cultures, societal values, beliefs, and preferred ways of organizing collective life across the globe and even within a single culture the meaning of gender varies over time. Chapters three and four of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to insightfully look at those views, and rhetorical movements (women and men’s movements) that have overtime influenced, defined and given various meanings to gender (masculinity and femininity).

At first glance, Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the hour-long TV series which premiered in 1997 and is now in its third season, bears little resemblance to the book which started the vampire craze -- Bram Stoker's Dracula, published a century earlier. And yet, looks can be deceiving. Although the trendy -- and often skimpy -- clothing and bandied about pop-culture references of "Buffy" clearly mark the series as a product of a far different culture than that of the Victorian England of Dracula, the underlying tensions of the two texts are far similar than one might think. Beneath the surface differences in the treatment of their heroines, the two texts

What is gender? The answer to that is not so simple. "Gender is what culture makes out of the ‘raw material' of biological sex," (Unger and Crawford, 1995). Also, there is a difference between what is gender identity and what is a gender role; a difference which seems to be even more difficult to differentiate between than the words "gender" and "sex". Media and other parts of our culture seem to believe they know the difference, yet up until a certain period in time, the same stereotypical characters were portrayed and used as role models for others in most media. Women characters being the helpless victims, while the strong men would come to save them (including

in so much as she has taken on the body of an innocent teenage boy

The different roles women and men characters play in the stories are also largely influenced by the society’s views. Women are portrayed

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Horror Genre The horror genre has very set conventions and rules and horror films

Gender can also be seen as just being a male or a female. For instance, your role in society. In the book Wicked this can be displayed by the

We’ve studied three fictional novels throughout this course, all of them having to do with plague or epidemic. These books all fits into the genre of dystopian. One of the themes that seemed prominent throughout all three books were the roles of the female protagonist or antagonist or the male counterpart of it. In Matheson’s book, I am Legend. The protagonist is a masculine man named Robert Neville, he is the last surviving human on the planet, living with only vampires around him until he meets what presumably is another human that is a feminine character. We find out later she is the reason he meets his demise. In contrast, James’ novel The Children of Men, the female character of Julian plays a huge role in saving humanity from the health crises they are facing in their world. The role of gender plays a huge part in these two works of literature, the health of both genders in both books determine the outcome, Julian being healthy, and Neville being able to survive by himself, they both represent an exceptional idea of masculinity and femininity. But the meaning of gender changes because of the epidemic of crises they are facing, for Neville’s case seeing a woman for the first time in three years, or Julian being pregnant, these changes the importance of gender.

Gender roles are society’s concepts of how men and women are expected to act and are shaped by cultural norms. Over the years society has influenced the way we think about gender norms through numerous media outlets; film, television, music videos, internet, etc. To support my argument I will use three class texts. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” by Audre Lorde, “Reading the Slender Body” by Susan Bordo, and “The Problem of Speaking for Others” by Linda Alcoff. Through those readings you will see how society affects our view, how gender roles are socially constructed, and how history shapes what is considered normal or acceptable.

Excellent post. It is harder to be a vampire hero than a human hero for the reasons you mention above. They have to overcome their vampiric nature to become a hero and that is to feed on the living. If a chicken has the intelligence of a human being, then it would also view human beings as villanous. Humans eat animals and vampires drink human's blood. Angel from Buffy the vampire slayer had to be cursed to turn into a good vampire while Edward from twilight simply suppressess his vampiric nature to avoid harming the human

In “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” Buffy is a attractive teenage female at Sunny Dale High School. A secret hero known to slay vampires and demons. Buffy is the main character in the show. Buffy excels in her agility to fight with strength, leadership, psychic abilities, super strength, danger senses and great super speed in order to fight the villains in town. This is a life about a teenage student who is characterized to play two roles but is stuck between trying to save people from vampires and trying to have a normal teenage life.

In a society dominated by male superheroes, it is not that often that a female character is able to step forward and defend the world. There have been quite a few female superheroes throughout the ages of popular culture, including the Canadian Marvel super-heroine, Aurora ("Marvel"), and DC Comic's character, Black Canary (Kanigher, and Infantino). Yet for every one female superhero that is encountered, there are at least a dozen more male superheroes to stand around—and often in front of—her. Even more frustratingly, the female superheroes are often merely there to be the gendered counterpart to the much more powerful, dominant male superheroes. There have been few women who have stood out as being independent, admirable sources of

Gender is a learned social construction on what you do. It is a cultural system based on the binary opposition of men and women but there are also variations

The term ‘gender’ was coined by John Money in 1955: “Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively” (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In

Society has clearly defined boundaries between what is considered to be male or female. The development of an individual’s gender role is formed by interactions with those in close proximity. Society constantly tells us how we should look, act and live based on gender. Family, friends and the media have a tremendous impact on how these roles are formed and the expected behavior of each gender role.