Anonymous Rex’s Weblog

In a moment of boredom, I watched the pilot of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Even if I hadn’t known this was a Joss Whedon project I would have immediately noticed certain Whedonesque elements––namely that kinky sex and rape were seamlessly and needlessly sublimated into the episode. This led me to ponder the Buffy phenomenon and to question Joss Whedon’s claim that he is a “feminist.” Let me back up: A reviewer of my forthcoming book excoriated me for not writing about Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I was never opposed to Buffy, but I found the episodes utterly incomprehensible. (It also has nothing to do with my forthcoming book, but such is the guild.) So I did my duty as a researcher: I got a Netflix account and watched every single episode. It wasn’t a bad show, but I noticed that every teenager and vampire in Sunnydale seems to enjoy sado-masochistic sex. Even Willow appears in one episode as a vampire whose favorite activity is straddling a tied up Angel and throwing lit matches onto his bare chest.

I can also think of five episodes of Buffy in which the female characters are nearly raped. In the first season, Xander is possessed by a hyena spirit that fuels his animal instincts and gives him superhuman strength. So he does––what I assume Joss Whedon would do in this state––he tackles Buffy and begins pawing at her bra straps. At the end of the episode, Xander gets an exorcism and the incident is laughed off as “sexual assault.”

In season two, the swim coach is giving his team steroids that turn them into fish monsters. When Buffy finds out, he casts her into a flooded subterranean dungeon full of fish-men. He calls down to her, “I already fed them, but my boys have other needs.” Gang raped by fish monsters? This is what came on after Animaniacs?

In the first episode of season six, a gang of demons on motorcycles has taken over the town. The biker demons corner Buffy’s female companions in an alley and announce that they are going to gang rape them for hours and that this will be extremely painful because they have enormous demon penises that are covered with thorny spikes. This was stated through innuendo but the meaning was unmistakable.

Later in season six, a group of occult minded geeks known as “the trio” find a way to turn women into sex slaves. Their first target breaks the spell to find herself dressed as a French maid, kneeling in front of a geek’s crotch. She announces, “You guys think this is a big joke but it’s rape!” I screamed at my television, “THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING!” I think this was actually the first use of the word “rape” in the series.

Then Spike attempts to date-rape Buffy. Now suddenly it’s a huge deal and all of the characters are outraged that Spike would do this. (Xander, who also attempted to rape Buffy is especially outraged.) Of course, date-rape is outrageous, but I would much rather be raped by a vampire I have already slept with than by a bunch of horny fish people. I have not covered here Sweet the musical demon, who attempts to abduct Buffy’s sister as “his queen” or Oz, who is coerced into sex against his will by a female werewolf, or the third episode of the series in which Xander is nearly raped and killed by a “She-Mantis.”

I have looked through several volumes of essays on Buffy and I have yet to encounter any analysis of rape. I’m sure it’s out there––dozens of essays on Buffy are written every year––but I think that fans may turn a blind eye to this seamy underbelly of the Whedonverse. What I find disturbing is that the first three episodes are not stories about the horrors of rape or overcoming an experience of rape––they seem to be fleeting chances to engage in fantasies of raping a super-heroine. The fact that Buffy always escapes being raped is irrelevant––it’s the threat of rape that is supposed to titillate the audience. This dynamic is more obvious in recent “torture porn” films like Hostel. The fact that the heroine ultimately escapes and slays her captors is meant to exonerate the audience for paying $9 to watch a woman being tortured.

This is enough for now. In a future installment I want to challenge the idea that female super-heroes are “feminist” and try to figure out what it means to watch a beautiful woman with super strength narrowly escape being raped by fish monsters.