Buffy vs. Twilight: Depictions of Women in Vampire Stories

So, as a heterosexual male who is almost a quarter of a century old, this is an embarassing thing to admit, but I'll have to say it: tonight, I rented Twilight out of pure curiosity. I wanted to see what the big hubub was over twinkly vampires and restrained sexuality that made all the pre-teen girls turn out to the theaters in droves. I'll admit, I didn't have a bad time watching it. The characters were interesting and sympathetic, and watching all the kids getting ready for prom brought back good memories of my high school days. What struck me as particularly interesting, though, was the fact that young girls across the country were so enthralled by this love story that they didn't notice, or didn't care, that the story was so disempowering for women.

Perhaps it's unfair for me to compare the movie to Buffy, since the two main similarities between them are that they both contain vampires and I've watched both of them recently. Yet, the vampire element does put them in a similar genre, and its interesting to see how the movie Twilight and the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer use the same mythology to give distinctly different visions of femininity.

The first thing that struck me in Twilight was the fact that the vampires contain such supernatural speed and strength that humans have no hope of defeating them. When Bella is captured by the vampire, James, she has no way to defend herself other than with the help of the Cullen family. Buffy, on the other hand, shows a world in which the vampires, while stronger than the average human, can be defeated and killed by humans. While the series focuses on the one woman in the world granted the strength to be able to defeat vampires, her friends, who are not blessed with such powers, show themselves capable of defeating vampires, just with a little extra effort.

Thus, when Bella, in Twilight, finds herself inches from death at the hands of a vampire, her only savior is Edward Cullen, and his family who shows up afterwards. To be fair, the Cullen family is not all male, but it is a distincrly patriarchal family (the mission of the Cullen family is often said to be the mission of Carlisle Cullen, the "father") and Edward is the one leading the fight to protect her. Bella esentially becomes the damsel in distress, incapable of defending herself.

Joss Whedon, when he created Buffy, set out to intentionally show a more empowered version of women than what is normally seen in the horror genre. Rather than the blonde, feminine character being seen as the damsel in distress, he wanted to put one such woman in a position of power. In addition to her, there was Willow, who developed magical powers to assist her best friend. Add in Anya, Cordelia, Tara, Dawn, Faith, and the potential slayers in season 7, and you had a female centric team working to defend the world from vampires. The men in the series either served in an advisory capacity (Giles) or, in an interesting gender role reversal, as damsels in distress (Xander).

This is important considering the sexual role Vampirism has always played in fiction, dating back even to the earliest stories about them. The penetrating nature of their attack is distinctly sexual, as is the fact that it's normally a male vampire attacking female victims. The violent and non-consentual nature of the attack means that a vampire attack is usually symbolic of rape. Thus, we're left with two different views of how women are protected from predators in these two stories: in Buffy, we see powerful women protecting other women (although not exclusively, there are plenty of male victims too), in Twilight we see a woman whose only salvation from a predatory attack is a man with the same power and penchant for violence as her attacker.

Admittedly, I've only seen the first Twilight movie, and have not read either that book or any of the subsequent sequels. Perhaps Bella becomes more empowered as the books go on. I certainly hope she does, because I like her as a character and would like to see her become stronger. Still, there seems to be no intention to create a strong, pro-feminist character in the first movie of the series, and that doesn't particularly give me hope for an future installments.