The Hero, The Homecoming Queen and the Whore: Three Female Fantasy Heroes for the New Millennium
By Alexis Muirhead
University of Northern British Columbia
November 21st, 2003
I. Women in a Superman’s World
Catwoman, Wonder Woman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were born out of seemingly innocuous genres: the noir detective story, superhero comics and teen drama for television. Each character has come to represent a point on the spectrum of female fantasy heroines. Catwoman prowls the night as a subversive Girl Friday, her precocious sexuality and sense of play a bright spot in the gloomy world of the Batman comic books. Wonder Woman is one of the few traditional female superheroes, holding her own against the forces of evil in the four-color world of superhuman theatrics. And Buffy Summers, enmeshed in the demographically-dominated universe of weekly teen drama, is a post-sexual revolution fantasy heroine, a combination of the noble appeal of Wonder Woman and the anti-hero charm of Catwoman. By examining the circumstances under which these characters were first created, their role in their fictional communities and their interactions with various love interests, it is possible to determine how the characterization of female heroes has changed in fantasy literature over the past sixty-three years. From transparent sex symbols and hollow female role models to empowered women with agendas of their own, Wonder Woman, Catwoman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer both transcend and reinforce gender stereotypes within the fantasy genre.
Buffy Summers is a modern hero for the new millennium but she owes her success and perhaps her very existence to Wonder Woman and Catwoman, both of whom recently celebrated their sixtieth year in continuous publication. Buffy’s status as a heroic protagonist and slayer of monsters, demons and the undead is inspired as much by comic book heroism as by monster movies. The concept of a cheerleader who hunts and kills vampires is novel enough, but not so long ago the idea of a female hero was revolutionary, particularly in the world of comic books.
Until the 1970s, comic books were considered an exclusively masculine domain. Written, illustrated, edited, published and consumed by white males, comics tended to relegate female characters to supporting roles if they included them at all. The main function of a female in a comic book was to “pine for the superhero, scheme to get closer to him, screw things up, get captured by the bad guy, and await rescue by the hero”,[1] Lois Lane being the prime example but echoed throughout the pantheon of comic books. Characters such as Black Canary, Hawkgirl, Supergirl and others were usually pale imitations of their heroic male counterparts. Other leading ladies, all carbon copies of the Lois Lane character, aided the male superheroes but did not don cape and tights themselves. If a female character was present at all in a comic book, she was added only for sex appeal. In 1977, Stan Lee published The Superhero Women, which illustrates the paucity of female superheroes perfectly. Lee’s tome was “an anthology…showcasing Marvel’s female superheroes. It featured ten characters, five of whom were actually supporting characters in titles dominated by male heroes”.[2] The other five female characters in Lee’s book appeared in titles that had already been canceled. Being a woman in a Superman’s world was not easy.