Buffy - Strong Women on TV

(Buffy-Zettelkasten)

[…]

What's astonishing even now is to look at the cast line-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not just Buffy herself, but also best friend Willow the witch, Willow's girlfriend Tara, nemesis-come-wary-ally Cordelia, ex-demon Anya, mother-in-a-trying-situation Joyce and latterly, the mystically-created sister Dawn.

So often now, a "strong woman" in a TV show or a movie will be almost entirely isolated from other women - from Katniss Everdene trying to survive the Hunger Games to Sandra Bullock's character in Gravity, from Carrie Mathison in Homeland to Daenerys Targaryan in Game of Thrones - female friendship, let alone having conversations with several women, seems utterly impossible for many of today's female characters.

When I raised this question with show creator - and now Hollywood director - Joss Whedon, he agreed perhaps the wrong lessons had been learned from Buffy's success.

"The romance and the supernatural and the lure of the vampire… all seemed to go over pretty well," he said.

"The self-actualised female who was in charge of things didn't land quite as solidly…. I, too, have been somewhat disappointed… it feels almost like a backlash - we want to inoculate ourselves against this by giving you everything [Buffy] had without the feminism."

[…]

Naomi Alderman in den BBC-News (Hervorhebung von mir).