Buffy's legacy

[Dioltach]

Article on the BBC.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, the author has a point. TV doesn't have a huge number of decent female characters.

Movies seem to be doing worse, in that regard. You can go to half a dozen movies now, and see not a single significant female character.

 

[Janx]

Yes, the author has a point. TV doesn't have a huge number of decent female characters.

Movies seem to be doing worse, in that regard. You can go to half a dozen movies now, and see not a single significant female character.

Or more to the point, haven't changed at all.

 

[Kramodlog]

Movies seem to be doing worse, in that regard. You can go to half a dozen movies now, and see not a single significant female character.

And yet with all the movie duds of this year, films with female heroines, like the Hunger Games and Gravity, did amazingly well. Maybe a lesson will be learn.

 

[sabrinathecat]

First 3 years of Buffy were great.
But it peaked.
But the checks kept coming, so Joss kept it going. And going. And going. Until he ground it into the dirt.

And we haven't had any female lead characters as good since.
Heck, the closest I've seen to a decent female supporting character would be the techie girl on The Arrow.

Why don't we have "The Huntress" with her own show?

 

[Ahnehnois]

The female character thing is really a tip of the iceberg. There isn't much point in expecting male directors, producers, and writers to do female characters as often or as well as they do male characters. There doesn't seem to be a huge push of women into the production side of the business; a slow trickle if anything. If anything, women are better represented in front of the camera than behind it.

As to Buffy, I always thought the namesake character was the weak link of the show, and the supporting characters and some of the more innovative writing was what made it work. It seems to me that if anything Hollywood learned the wrong lesson from this show, which was that martial prowess is important. Now we see tons of frequently waiflike women beating up on much larger men (sometimes with supernatural powers for justification, sometimes not), an image that could be seen as cool and subversive when Buffy did it, but is now badly overdone. What we don't see is more reality-based images of violence against women, because it would be too upsetting for the mass audience. We also don't see any really interesting and well-developed female leads who do things other than gratuitous violence, which again I suspect is due to the people writing them.

I thought BSG tackled gender issues much better (despite an almost exclusively male creative team behind the scenes), and every significant female actor on that show has had a lot of success since then.

 

[Morrus]

BSG did very well. I'd argue that Starbuck was the biggest part there. Gravity and Hunger Games, obviously.

I think there are many, many strong female parts these days. But they're not often the *lead*.

There are plenty of comedies with women as leads. It's the action stuff that's missing.

Shows like Helen Mirren's Prime Suspect are the leaders. Not enough of them.

 

[Crothian]

I enjoyed the what I call knock of shows that came out a few years after Buffy and all had female leads: Alias, Dark Angel, and Veronica Mars. It is also pretty amazing that all three of those actresses have gone on to have some pretty good careers.

 

[Umbran]

Why don't we have "The Huntress" with her own show?

Probably because their attempt at a "Birds of Prey" series back in 2002 bombed badly.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Probably because their attempt at a "Birds of Prey" series back in 2002 bombed badly.

Yeah, because they were trying to force a "Charmed" format into the DC universe, and were not allowed to use any major characters. In short, the show was shot in the foot before it had a chance. And yes, it sucked.

Zander and Willow were always way more interesting that Buffy.
Veronica Mars and other shows tried to copy the idea, but it never worked for me--usually because they were copying the idea without the writing chops to support it.