Abstract
No doubt due to the surface similarity of the romance narrative—teenage girl falls in love with a vampire—comparisons between Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS)and Bella Swan of the Twilight series are ubiquitous. One comparison, Jonathan McIntosh’s widely viewed (over a million hits on YouTube) mash-up, Buffy vs. Edward: Twilight Remixed, imagines a universe in which Edward Cullen attempts to woo not Bella Swan but Buffy Summers, vampire slayer and feminist darling. McIntosh sees his work as an argument against the specific way in which romance and gender roles are constructed in the Twilight series, praising BtVS for its resistance to gender stereotypes and condemning Twilight for its “antiquated, sexist” constructions of gender.1
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Notes
Jonathan McIntosh, “What Would Buffy Do?: Notes on Dusting Edward Cullen,” Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, August 12, 2009. Web. http://bitchmagazine.org/post/what-would-buffy-do-notes-on-dusting-edward-cullen. Accessed September 11, 2009.
However, I should note that there are many critiques of Buffy as feminist role model. For an excellent overview of such critiques, see Patricia Pender’s article “I’m Buffy and You’re… History” in Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, eds. Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Print).
Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley, “Popularity Contests: The Meaning of Popular Feminism,” in Feminism in Popular Culture, eds. Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley (Oxford: Berg, 2006. Print), 1.
Lucy Mangan, “Dangerous Liaisons,” The Guardian, December 4, 2008. Web. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/04/twilight-film-vampire Accessed January 10, 2010.
Rachel Fudge, “The Buffy Effect,” Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, Summer 1999, no. 10,. Web. http://bitchmagazine.org/article/buffy-effect Accessed January 3, 2010.
Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2006. Print.), 54–60.
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000. Print), 137.
Jessica Valenti, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2007. Print), 6.
Jessica Valenti, “Purely Rape: The Myth of Sexual Purity and How It Reinforces Rape Culture,” in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, eds. Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008. Print), 300.
Christine Seifert, “Bite Me! (Or Don’t),” Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, Winter 2009, no. 42, 23. Print.
Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print), 282.
Linda Christian-Smith, Becoming a Woman Through Romance (New York: Routledge, 1990. Print), 34;4l.
Roberta Seelinger Trites, Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000. Print.), 88.
Brad Perry, “Hooking Up with Healthy Sexuality: The Lessons Boys Learn (and Don’t Learn) About Sexuality, and Why a Sex-Positive Rape-Prevention Paradigm Can Benefit Everyone Involved” in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, eds. Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008. Print), 200.
Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print), 331.
Heather Corinna, “An Immodest Proposal,” in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, eds. Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008. Print), 184.
Laura Miller, “Buffy Fans: Read This,” Salon, June 23, 2009, Web. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/06/23/vampire_fiction/index.html Accessed September 14, 2009.
Sarah Seltzer, “Twilight. Sexual Longing in an Abstinence-Only World,” The Huffington Post, August 9, 2008, Web. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-seltzer/twilight-sexual-longing-i_b_H7927.html, Accessed January 10, 2010.
Stephenie Meyer, New Moon (New York: Little, Brown, 2006. Print), 70.
Joss Whedon, Commentary on “Innocence,” Buff the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Second Season on DVD (Los Angeles, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2002).
Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting YoungWomen (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2010. Print), 147.
Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown, 2008. Print), 86–98.
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© 2011 Giselle Liza Anatol
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Nicol, R. (2011). “When you kiss me, I want to die”: Arrested Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight Series. In: Anatol, G.L. (eds) Bringing Light to Twilight. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119246_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119246_9
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