How tainted is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 25 years on?

In March 1997, Buffy premiered in the US – and changed TV forever. But how does it look in the cold light of 2022, and after recent allegations about its creator, asks Hanna Flint.

As a UK-based Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, I can the first time I was acquainted with the now era-defining show about a Californian high school girl with the job of protecting humankind from various bloodsuckers, demons and supernatural forces. Limited to five terrestrial channels in our household, I didn't catch the original British premiere on Sky One – but when it then launched on the BBC, more than a year after its US debut, on 30 December 1998 at 8pm, my brothers and I were glued to our seats to watch Welcome to the Hellmouth, the feature-length season-one opener.

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With each new episode and season following the superpowered escapades of Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, it acquired a bigger and ever more ionate fanbase. And for me, as for many a schoolgirl and boy at the time, tuning into Buffy became a religious endeavour. Buffy Summers was a badass teen goddess, and I worshipped the hellish ground she slayed on.

But now, 25 years ago this week since it first premiered in the US, a cultural reappraisal is happening as fans have increasingly found themselves confronted with certain questions about the show: does it still hold up as the important piece of groundbreaking, feminist television it was once heralded as, in the cold light of 2022? How do they square their ardent affection for the iconic cult series with its more problematic elements? And given the disturbing accusations made by the cast about its creator Joss Whedon and his allegedly "toxic" and "not appropriate" behaviour on set, to what extent should the art be separated from the artist – or not – in this case?

A new take on teen existence

Professor Matthew Pateman, head of English and creative arts at Edge Hill University, first caught on to Buffy as a lecturer in his late 20s. He began including it as part of a popular culture class he taught in the early 2000s, then later in 2006 made it a core feature of his "televisual narratives" module. He has subsequently written a book, The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with  a book about Whedon's work. "It felt like a really smart, witty, well put together and incredibly fresh piece of television unlike anything else that I was aware of at the time," Pateman tells BBC Culture. Sure, it was mostly set in a high school but compared to the in-some-ways equivalent Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, it took its audience more seriously, with its dark humour and complex characterisation. "It felt like it was saying, 'we think you are interesting, grown-up people who want to be interested in interesting grown-up things,'" says Pateman.

Specifically, it took teenage girls seriously. When Whedon first envisioned Buffy in the original 1992 film of the same name, before developing the series for Warner Bros' newly created WB network (now called CW), he wanted to subvert the pretty blonde stereotype of a young woman whose sole purpose in horror movies had been to scream and be murdered. "I liked the fact that Buffy was the one who makes the monster scream, as opposed to the other way around," says Becky Darke, a podcaster and writer on film, horror and 90s pop culture. Neither was Buffy forced to sacrifice (well, not entirely) her female interest in fashion, beauty, dating, sex or socialising as a consequence of her heroic destiny. Season one episode Never Kill a Boy on the First Date articulates this brilliantly in a conversation between the Slayer and her father-like Watcher Rupert Giles (played by Anthony Head), tasked throughout with guiding her slayering efforts. "Clark Kent has a job – I just want to go on a date," she tells Giles. "…and look, I won't go far, okay! If the apocalypse comes, beep me!"

"There is a great collision between a high-school girl trying to be popular and then having to fight the forces of darkness at night," says Darke. "I like the fact that she's allowed to make mistakes, sometimes catastrophic mistakes, but you don't either give up on her or wish them away; you actually have to watch her deal with them." Those dark forces manifested in a way that also served as a metaphor for the things teens were dealing with, like when Buffy's vampire lover Angel (David Boreanaz) becomes a monster after Buffy loses her virginity to him: a demonic reflection of the first-time experience of some young women when confronted with the coldness of young men once they’ve had sex. "The writers handled all of that coming-of-age stuff in a mature, thoughtful way by dovetailing the horror and fantasy elements with the teen existence," says Marianne McKillop, an English teacher who famously won UK quiz show Mastermind with Buffy as her specialist subject. She cites the example of the season one episode in which a girl "becomes invisible because she's being ignored at school", and the "werewolves, you know, sprouting hair and behaving in weird ways".

As the seasons went on, real issues were dealt with in the foreground rather than the subtext: Buffy's aspirational California lifestyle was substituted for greater social realism from season five when she is forced to drop out of college and take a job at a suspicious burger t to look after her high schooler "sister" Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) and keep a roof over their heads. "You feel like she should be rich or someone should just be funding her life so that she can do this full time and that's just not the case," says actress and writer Isaura Barbé-Brown. Buffy is certainly more Peter Parker than Tony Stark, and that's what made her so relatable, a quality bolstered by the type of friends she had: the so-called Scooby Gang, who were an eclectic mixture of high-school types. "I also liked the idea that the popular girl might actually decide that the nerdy one is quite fun, and you can form your own clique of outsiders," says Darke.

While the Scooby Gang line-up changed over the seven seasons, Giles, Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), and Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendan) were its mainstays, with characters like Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), Oz (Seth Green), Anya (Emma Caulfield), Tara (Amber Benson) and Spike (James Marsters) thrown into the mix. Most of them evolved into effective and powerful people who could be there for Buffy at home and on the battlefield – none more so than Willow, who transformed from being the nerdy best friend into a mighty witch in one of the series' most celebrated character arcs. That her sexuality developed as her powers became more prominent led to what remains a monumental moment for queer representation on the small screen. "Her coming out to Buffy was deftly handled," says Darke. "Her going from this heterosexual relationship with Oz, a fan favourite, then meeting [fellow witch] Tara, and realising that she had feelings for her, [and] that being a beautiful thing that unfolded in front of the audience's eyes, was just so, so important."

Buffy and representation 

But while Buffy was clearly groundbreaking when it came to representation in some respects, it fell down badly in others. Apart from Bianca Lawson, who played Kendra Young, Buffy's shortlived fellow Slayer who was killed off in the second season after three episodes, and Ara Celi, who played the Inca Mummy Girl in one episode of season two, women of colour were practically nonexistent until season seven when the so-called Potential Slayers (or slayers-in-training) were introduced, adding slightly more ethnic diversity. "When I was younger, I didn't really notice [the whiteness of the show] because so much of TV was like that and there was a real segregation between watching the show that has all black people in it and then every other show that just [didn't] have any," Barbé-Brown says, noting Buffy's mostly white writing staff. "I don't feel like anyone who [was] running the show [was] capable of handling [race]."

And then there were the show's gender politics: for while it foregrounded many empowered women, it also featured a problematic male lead in the shape of Xander. There were other examples of toxic and fragile masculinity on the show, like the reprisal of teenage boy villains into The Trio in series six, but the difference was that Xander was positioned as a nice guy – and rewatching the series now, that's something which leaves a particularly bad taste. A pretty girl couldn’t walk by without Xander oggling or pestering them, and it mostly goes unquestioned, especially where Buffy is concerned. His entitled attitude towards her and animosity towards every guy she dates is nauseating to watch. "In the first episode, Buffy drops her books and he says, 'Can I have you? Oh I mean, can I help you">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });