First of all, Joss and others affiliated with the show have commented on how all the vampires are hypersexed in a sadistic way and that the idea of being bitten by a vampire they see as a metaphor for sexual assault. This is true of Spike, Drusilla, Dracula, Angel in his demonic form, the Gorch brothers, Vamps Willow and Xander, and most other vampires on the show.
Now to details. Warning: major plot spoilers for seasons 1-4 of the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer ahead.
In Season One of Buffy, they are sophomores in high school.
In “I Robot, You Jane,” Willow becomes romantically involved with a person she knows only from the Internet, who turns out to be a bodiless demon haunting the school computers.
In an episode I can’t remember the name of because it is boring, Xander is nearly seduced by an attractive young teacher, who turns out to be a giant insectoid demon who is plotting to eat him alive.
In “The Pack,” Xander sexually and physically assaults Buffy while possessed by the spirit of a hyena which also makes him try to kill people.
In Season Two, they are juniors in high school.
In “Inca Mummy Girl,” Xander is nearly seduced by a thousand-year-old mummy who sucks the life out of people with her kiss.
In “Reptile Boy,” Buffy and her friends attend a fraternity party where boys drug young girls and sacrifice them to a giant demon snake, which is very subtle.
In “Phases,” a werewolf targets students whose pheromones are high, slaughtering them at a favorite make-out spot.
In “Bad Eggs,” students learn in a health class about the dangers of early sexual activity, including STDs and teen pregnancy, and are given an exercise to illustrate how difficult it is to raise a child as a teenager.
In “Surprise,” Buffy chooses to have sex with Angel, her boyfriend of more than a year. This sex results in Angel’s losing his soul, becoming psychotically evil and terrorizing and killing her friends.
In “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” a love spell intended to make Xander attractive to Cordelia goes awry and makes him sexually irresistible to every woman he encounters, with his life eventually being endangered by the mob of women who want to possess him.
In “Passion,” on the night when Giles and Jenny Calendar, two adult teachers, plan to have sex for the first time, Angel murders Jenny and arranges her dead body in bed for Giles to find.
In Season Three, they are seniors in high school.
Willow and Xander’s hormonal attraction to each other over the course of the season finally results, in “Lovers Walk,” in heartbreak for Willow, Oz, Xander and Cordelia, and a near-fatal physical injury for Cordelia. In response to her heartbreak, Cordelia unwittingly summons a demon and creates an alternate universe of chaos and despair in “The Wish.”
In “Band Candy,” Giles and Joyce, two adults, have sex while under the influence of a magical drug that is causing them to act extremely stupid and immature in many ways.
When Willow, a virgin, initiates sex with her boyfriend Oz, in “Revelations,” he gently tells her that he’s honored by the offer, and very attracted to her, but he wants to wait until he’s sure they’re both ready for all the right reasons, because he loves and respects her too much to do otherwise.
Throughout the season, Faith is portrayed as destructively irresponsible and self-absorbed, and eventually evil. One of the ways this destructiveness manifests itself is through blatant and aggressive promiscuity.
In “The Wish,” the alternate-universe, demonic versions of Willow and Xander are very highly sexed, and in “Doppelgangland” it becomes clearer that the demonic Willow is basically incapable of relating to others except through sexually charged sadism. When called upon to encounter and later impersonate her vampire doppelganger, Willow is very deeply freaked out by this.
In Season Four, they are freshmen in college. This makes them a bit too old to really be covered in a discussion of how teenagers who have and don’t have sex are portrayed on television, but anyway:
Buffy has a one-night stand with a boy who does not call her afterwards, and feels used and cheap and depressed.
Willow is sleeping with Oz, her boyfriend of nearly two years.
Veruca, a werewolf who seduces Oz away from Willow, is portrayed as evil, irresponsible, self-centered, and very highly sexed. She uses Oz’s sexual nature to manipulate him into acting against his mind and heart. When, as a result of this sexual manipulation, Oz leaves Willow, Willow’s heartbreak leads to abuse of her powers to cause pain and destruction for her friends.
Buffy eventually begins a steady dating relationship with Riley, but she does not have sex with him until her body is possessed by the evil Faith, who takes the opportunity to initiate sex with Riley (who believes he is sleeping with Buffy). Later, Buffy is terribly hurt and unhappy to discover what has happened.
After Oz’ departure and a certain amount of recovery, Willow begins a friendship with Tara, which eventually deepens into romantic love and eventually involves implied sexual consummation.
Anya, an ex-demon, initiates sex with Xander because she says she wants to get over her strange emotional attachment to him and thinks sex will help with that. After having sex, she is more agitated about the attachment than ever and demands commitment from him. They begin a committed dating relationship involving sex.
After that they aren’t teenagers any more, so I will not bother.
I recall all of those episodes you’ve mentioned, but nothing in them have actually promoted abstinence or virginity. Willow’s parents, while she is in high school, have strict rules put in place to try to ensure her virginity, but those are thrown out the window with Oz. Of course, I must say that there is no instance where someone is all “Yay, have sex!” IMO, Buffy seems neutral on the topic.
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After all, Buffy is about a vampire hunter/slayer, and not really about sex, like some other shows are. To say it’s completely “yay! virginity!” isn’t accurate, as they say very little about it. In the same way, It’s not all “Yay! Sex!” either. It’s more about battling evil (demons, vamps etc.) and inherently remains neutral regarding sex. (I’m a big Buffy fan, as well.) 🙂
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“nothing in them have actually promoted abstinence or virginity” What would constitute promoting abstinence and virginity?
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Well, for one, not showing virgins to be naive about a bunch of different things. For example, in the first two seasons, Willow is very naive and innocent about many things, including magic. She’s seen to be more a “goody-two-shoes” and a brainiac at that. All that changes with Oz, though… and she ends up going a little overboard with certain aspects.
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Along with that, the clothing that’s worn in most cases screams sexuality. I’m not just talking about vamps like Dru either. Cordelia’s always in the short skirts, Buffy wears tight clothing, sometimes making me think she might actually end up popping out of her shirt. I’m not saying this is a constant, but it does happen quite often.
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So in the course of two notes this person has complained about virgins being portrayed as “naive and goody two shoes” and at the same time said that wearing clothes that reveal skin fails to promote healthy sexuality. So if a virgin dresses conservatively it’s bad because she’s being depicted as a goody two shoes, and if she doesn’t, it’s bad because she’s dressed like a whore.
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That makes sense .. only you know… not. I wonder if yowie also thought The Old Man and the Sea was mostly about a fish and a boat and that sort of thing.
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I will never understand why people think “promoting abstinence” is the same as acting as though sex does not exist. This reminds me of the whole james dobson thing, where apparently letting kids know that homosexuals exist is badness. I guess now acknowledging that teens have sex is badness, regardless of whether we present it as a choice that carries consequences.
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yowie, are you asserting that virgins are not, in fact, more innocent and less experienced about sex than non-virgins? As for Willow’s being ignorant in other matters, you point out correctly that she is portrayed as a “brainiac,” i.e. highly intelligent. So… why are innocence, goodness (or “goody-two-shoes”-ness?), and intelligence, bad traits for a virgin to be associated with?
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I never said that innocence was a bad thing, but just being a virgin doesn’t mean that a person is completely ignorant about sexuality, or about various other topics, like the presence of evil. Willow, for the first two seasons, was portrayed in such a way that innocence was equal to ignorance. This is obviously not the case. My sister is 21, and a virgin. But she is not ignorant about sexuality.
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As for the clothing: Well, there’s a difference between dressing conservatively and dressing like you’re still six years old. In fact, many groups tend to lean more toward the conservative adult style. (ie. “Dress ‘sexy’ and not slutty.”) One can dress nicely and conservatively, and still be attractive. You don’t need to be nearly falling out of your shirt to be thought of as sexy.
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I never said to act as though sex didn’t exist. In fact, far from it. It’s obvious that sex is a part of life, no matter when you start with it. Sex should be learned about from a young age, in my opinion. But not all of it has to be promotion of sex. Often times, kids will understand that they don’t *have* to do something if they don’t *want* to. That option isn’t really available to them in teen
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-hood. Numerous shows they watch promote that sex is great, amazing, and that if you don’t do it by the time you hit a certain age (I have a friend who’s seventeen, who believes everyone should lose their virginities by their fifteenth birthday, or something’s wrong) while parents are trying to tell them “Don’t do it until you’re married or you’ll go to hell.” No pressure there. But if we were to
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teach kids about sex, and about all the options, then the pressure wouldn’t be so intense on them in the teenage years. They know that they can make their own choice in the matter, and wouldn’t need to listen to a television show, or whatnot, as they would already be informed, and many of these teeny-bopper shows they see wouldn’t tell them “This is the way it has to be.”
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Of course, all of this is in regards to ONE television show, what I wrote up earlier. In all of the episodes cited, I had only seen one synopsis that was partially promoting abstinence. Of course, Willow, in that one, was wanting to have sex, because she thought she was the only virgin still in Sunnydale High. Pressure. The “That’s not normal” mentality was in that episode as well.
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IÂ’ve never even seen Buffy. My brotherÂ’s girlfriend is crazy for it though. I just could never get passed how goofy they made the vampires look, so I knew IÂ’d have a hard time taking the show seriously.
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The episode you can’t remember is “Teacher’s Pet”.
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RYN: The point that I was trying to make to Scarlett is that under evangelical ideas about the bible, there is no mention of dinosaurs. What you’re doing is “interpreting” the text. I don’t have a problem with this, I do it myself, I’m trying to point out how hypocritical evangelical Christians are.
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RYN: Very good! I’m impressed that you knew about Bill Hicks. Now, if you tell me where the Gorch brothers came from I’ll propose marriage.
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RYN: They’re based on the Gorch brothers from The Wild Bunch the Sam Peckinpah movie that Joss Whedon is obsessed with. I don’t know if you watch Angel, but the circle of the black thorn symbol and a lot of the circle imagery is an idea from The Wild Bunch
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RYN: Haha, it’s just because of my western love as well as my interest in Whedon as well as writing a paper on the same idea. You should see the Wild Bunch, it’s awsome.
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lol
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