Dead Boyfriends Are My Birthright: Buffy Summers, Part 1
February 9, 2024
Welcome back, dear readers, to my attempt to answer "So what about dead boyfriends?" Does Buffy, the titular vampire slayer, lose a statistically significant number of love interests to the ravages of time, monsters, and Joss Whedon's idea of good storytelling? Read on to find out.
On Barbie, the Oscars, and Privilege
January 30, 2024
We have a special guest today: my social media manager, research consultant, and sister, Katie Marinello. She has some thoughts to share. Read on...
When the Oscars were announced on Tuesday, I hopped on Facebook to register my thoughts about the nominations for Barbie: The Movie.
They nominated Ryan Gosling and not Margot Robbie.
They nominated Ken and not Barbie.
In a movie about the patriarchy.
That’s too on the nose even for a movie about a children’s toy.
7 Questions for The Sci-Fi Feminist
January 28, 2024
Two weeks ago, I was aimlessly scrolling through Reddit (as one does) when I stumbled upon a post about The Sci-Fi Feminist, a blog and podcast with an excellent name. I connected with its author and we decided to mutually guest-post to introduce on each other to our audiences. In the entry below, everything in red was written by The Sci-Fi Feminist. To see my answers to these questions, you'll just have to head over to The Sci-Fi Feminist! Without further ado...
Welcome, guest contributor! Can you please introduce yourself and summarize what your project is?
My name is Janine Engelbrecht, and I am a lecturer and academic at a creative institution called The Open Window - I teach and manage the Film Theory course there. I did my Master's degree on the transformation of the video game heroine, Lara Croft, from the 1990s to the 2010s, and broadened the study during my doctorate degree. In my PhD thesis, I identified a new heroine archetype that has emerged and theorised* where this archetype fits in the context of feminism.
Into Every Generation a Cursed Protagonist is Born: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
January 15, 2024
Dad: This is a show where a teenager has to go to school during the day and fight vampires at night, and there's a vampire every night.
Me: When does she sleep?
Dad: Probably the weekends when the show isn't on.
- An actual conversation I had c. age 6 or 7
Welcome, dear readers, to the official introduction to our next contestant franchise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. BTVS is a show that many a person has recommended to me over the years, starting with my dad (hi, Dad!) I resisted for a long time because I'd heard the creator is a chauvinist pig. (Spoiler alert: he is.) I've finally watched it now because it happens to be the #1 most commonly mentioned example of a female protagonist with the Cartwright Curse. As you may have surmised from the fact that I wrote two posts about it while I was still watching, I have some thoughts.
Art, Artists, and the problem of Joss Whedon
December 7, 2023
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m in the process of researching Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and her dead fictional boyfriends. Before I can write a proper introduction post for that franchise, however, I have to deal with one uncomfortable fact: its creator is a bad, bad man.
Buffy, Angel, and the Problem with Age-Gap Relationships
September 15, 2023
Content Warning: this is a post about people violating the age of consent.
Many years ago, a 12-year-old girl in my hometown became pregnant. I was also 12 at the time, but went to a different school, so I didn't know her personally. Nevertheless, I knew about her situation because my teacher took it as a chance to scold my class for belonging to a "promiscuous generation." Being the kind of obnoxious 7th grader who read the newspapers, however, I soon learned something that teacher had left out: the father of the baby had been arrested.