A Second Adolescence, Deconstructing Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I am having a bit of a second adolescence. In that vein, I have been rewatching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (perhaps my all time favorite show, don't judge) For this exercise, I analyzed episode 5 of season 2, "Reptile Boy" through both a feminist lens and a deconstructionist lens.



Feminist Lens

This one is pretty easy to jump in on, because the show is about a girl whose calling in life is to kill vampires. Rather than being the "damsel in distress" figure, she is placed in the role of hero, a girl who is charged with saving the world time and time again. It really doesn't get much more feminist than that. Throughout the episode (and the series) the viewer watches Buffy battle vampires and other demons.
This particular episode centers around the abduction of several high school girls by a fraternity. We later discover that the fraternity keeps a giant snake in the basement that must be fed a yearly tribute of girls. This episode plays on the trope of the sexually agressive fraternity brothers preying on young, naive and innocent (read, virginal) high school girls. Though Buffy ultimately triumphs, the episode also serves as a warning, suggesting that older men are sexually (and literally) predatory and that college males only want sex from high school girls. This message is reinforced by the particular demon Buffy must fight in this episode. Machida, the snake in the episode is easily read as a phallic symbol, served by college aged boys (who can, of course, think of nothing by taking advantage of young girls). Buffy ultimately decapitates the snake as it attempts to devour Cordelia, a fairly shameless, but effective, metaphor for assault and emasculinization.

All in all, the episode effectively conveys the straightforward, simple feminist "girl power" message embodied by the show.

Deconstructionist Lens

Like most episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this particular episode relies heavily on binary, both as a source of amusement and to uphold its "girl power" agenda. The show's reliance on gender binary, and the ways in which this binary unravels the feminist message of the show is especially evident in this episode.

The catalyst that makes Buffy choose to attend the fraternity party with Cordelia is a misunderstanding in her relationship with Angel. Angel, being male and, according to traditional gender binaries, therefore stoic, has not asked Buffy on the kind of traditional date she would like. Buffy, playing the typical teenage girl, lashes out by attending the party and flirting with other boys. Through she is the slayer, she seems to only be able to be strong under a male gaze.

The relationship between Buffy and the male gaze is not only played out through her dating relationships with Angel and the fraternity boys in this episode. She also butts heads with Giles, her "watcher" and father figure. In this episode Giles pushes Buffy to train harder, but she resists, insisting that she requires more time to be a teenage girl (which for Buffy means mostly shopping and dating). At the end of the episode, Giles acquiesces, upholding Buffy's traditional gender role and promising to "nudge" Buffy rather than push her in her training.

The gender dichotomy is pushed to an extreme in the character of Xander in this episode. Like the fraternity boys in the episode, Xander's motives are driven completely by his hormones. Unlike the fraternity boys, however, he is permitted to interact with the women in his world solely through this lens. Out of jealousy, Xander follows Buffy and Cordelia to the party. There he is humiliated, forced to dress in drag and wear makeup for the amusement of the fraternity boys who assume he is a new pledge. This assault on Xander's masculinity is deemed unacceptable by the text of the episode. The gender binaries in the episode work in such a way that it is permitted for Buffy to play with gender by being strong and saving herself when she is placed in the role of damsel in distress, but for Xander, a play with gender norms is considered an insult.