One of the habits that I have acquired (as many of you believe) during these crazy months of lockdown is spending the evenings having TV marathons of many new and old series.
An activity that I carried out also during this Italian summer, because it is wonderful to be able to go out and be outdoors but on certain days you would like to roll into a crypt due to the suffocating heat.
And summer is perfect for horror, for fantasy, for escapism, so thanks to the advice of my bff (thank you Joe), I started seeing one of the cult series of the 90s: Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, aired in our country on Italia Uno, from 2000 to 2005.
As a person born in the 90s I thiink that there's something extremely comforting and nostalgic about series set during that period and the early 2000s, but Buffy is so much more.
It may seem incredible, but a series conceived back in 1992 has had and still has an extremely revolutionary and subversive value.
Buffy was created by Joss Whedon, mostly known for being the "father" of the Avengers, with a very specific idea: to take the classic trope of the blonde and frivolous girl that in horror films recklessly ventures into a dark alley and is killed immediately by the serial killer/monster and subvert it, making her a strong heroine, capable of fighting and taking care of herself.
Whedon was also inspired by his mother, Lee Stearns, a strong feminist, who raised him on her own after a divorce. It's all a tribute to female strength and energy.
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So at the beginning of the series we find the young Buffy, played by the bright Sarah Michelle Gellar, who has just moved to the town of Sunnydale and tries to integrate into the school, where she befriends the sweet and nerdy Willow (Alyson Hannigram) and the clumsy failed Latin lover Xander (Nicholas Brendon). On the surface Buffy represents the stereotype of the classic popular teen drama girl: beautiful, blonde, eager for social life and love, fashion-conscious, uninterested in studying.
In reality she experiences a perennial inner conflict: last in a line of slayers, vampire hunters, who in Sunnydale, a city with a solar name, but actually located above the mouth of hell, proliferate, along with a number of other demonic creatures, she must keep her identity hidden, even from her mother, and balance a teenage life with constant battles against increasingly fearsome enemies. Guided by librarian and mentor Giles (Anthony Head) Buffy goes from being a reluctant immature girl to accept her fate as an heroine who knows how to take full responsibility.
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Buffy represents that prototype of the titanic hero, usually male, who lives carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, often in silence and who demonstrates independence, strength (physical and otherwise) in every situation, who suffers and experiences intense torments, who falls in love, but that knows how to be enough in herself.
And all this while remaining a girl with humor and with super fashionable 90s miniskirts. She overcame stereotypes in an almost casual way, with a great naturalness, becoming the representative of a very contemporary feminism.
So contemporary that it has inspired an endless series of comics, novels, spinoffs (some still perhaps in production) and even the so-called Buffy Studies: it is in fact the series that has the greatest amount of academic studies (over 200), with even dedicated university courses.
Another very modern theme is the non-toxic masculinity, exemplified by the character of Giles, a male prototype of calmness and culture, who becomes for Buffy a sort of father figure, always very careful to treat her as a full grown person, with the her needs and feelings, and by Angel, Buffy's tormented first love, a vampire who regrets his bloody past and displays a sensitivity that stereotypically seems almost more feminine.
And then we absolutely cannot forget the incredible contribution to LGBT+ representation (spoilerrrrrs): Willow, initially insecure and fragile, realizes that she is an extremely powerful witch and almost at the same time, realizes her homosexuality, starting a relationship with her friend Tara.
Even if it seems paradoxical, at the time the presence of homosexual and moreover female characters in the mainstream series was still very small (and even today the situation is, let's say, improvable) and this choice was welcomed by fans positively but also with many resistances, yet despite everything Whedon never wanted to back down and it's quite significant that he made one of the most crucial and powerful characters in the series a member of the LGBT + community.
If you love feminist themes but also adventure, escapism and why not, 90s humor, this is a perfect view for the summer.
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