From Buffy to Elena: where did it all go wrong?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed the world. Or so we thought. A decade ago super heroines ruled television. Buffy Summers, Alias' Sydney Bristow, and the Charmed Ones to name but a few.
Now, you’re hard pushed to find a female character who doesn’t reach for the valium the minute something slightly toothy wanders into view. It’s getting ridiculous.
Buffy was the slayer. She killed vampires, demons and the occasional god. She inspired a generation of girls by showing them that they didn’t have to be weak, feeble beings, but a force to be reckoned with.
Now in her place we find Elena (of ITV2’s The Vampire Diaries fame). A slightly dim girl, who for some unknown reason has two vampire brothers (Stefan and Damon Salvatore) fighting over her. Or in reality fighting over who gets to save her.
Just like Buffy, Elena’s best friend Bonnie is a witch. She can float feathers. Give her a pillow and she’ll have anyone entertained, but Willow Rosenberg, she is not.
Elena like Buffy is also a lover of the bloodsuckers, Stefan specifically, but it’s not an equal relationship. Stefan could lose control at any moment and Elena would be dead in an instant.
Buffy Summers had all the strengths of a vampire with none of the weaknesses, so if Angel - her bloodsucking-cursed-with-a-soul-lover, or any vampire started to treat the locals as happy meals, she’d stake them. The best Elena could do in that situation would be to ask if they want fries and a milkshake too.
Buffy did once lose her slayer powers, and went up against a psychopathic vampire and she still saved the day. Elena, in comparison, can barely 'Save As'.
Is this what teenage girls are meant to look up to now? Instead of saving the world themselves, they have to wait until a man does it for them?
The siblings that saved the world a few years ago were the Halliwell sisters. The Charmed Ones. Three witches, who vanquished demons with rhyming couplets and pithy one-liners. Now it’s Supernatural's Winchester Brothers doing it. With a magic gun and a bit of salt. Frankly, they’re barely trying.
It’s not even confined to the supernatural genre. In the spy world there was Alias’s Sydney Bristow. A CIA agent that makes Jack Bauer look slow: she saved the world in 18 hours, not 24.
The only slightly super heroine left is Smallville’s Lois Lane, and that’s pushing it. Brave she may be, but she still needs saving every second Thursday.
These things come in cycles, and now vampires and men are ruling, but we look forward to the time when girl power is reborn and the super heroines return. Who’s for a Wonder Woman remake?
