Spike sacrifices his life as part of the plan to defeat the first evil. This can be read as the Slayers not being able to save themselves and needing a man for the final rescue, despite the fact that I think it's actually about a vampire realizing and utilizing the ramifications of the soul he fought for. I think there is sexism in lots of places in Buffy, particularly in how everyone addresses Buffy's relationship history, but this is not one of the places where I find it present. However, as we live in a society filled with sexism and where, at the end of the day, most movies are about Boy Saves Girl whatever we were supposed to see about teamwork, cooperation, the girls living, Spike's soul is easily drowned in most lenses by the sense that the Boy Saved the Girl, Again.
It's like the problem of rape on the show. Yes, lots of the show actually talks about rape. Some of the show is an allegory for rape. But bad things happen to women on the show that aren't about rape or about gender, but are about the fact that Bad Things Happen to Heroes on TV, but it's hard to know what falls into what categories, so despite my feeling that Whedon is preoccupied with rape issues in a way that doesn't always serve the purpose I think he wants his discussion of them to serve, all violence that occurs against female characters on Buffy is not actually about rape. However, figuring out what is and isn't about rape, when society and experience and often the show itself tells us that everything comes down to sexual violence makes the analysis practically impossible to do and obscures whatever it is the show is trying to say about rape as much as it obscures whatever it is the show is trying to say about other types of violence/training/tragedy both in and outside gendered terms.
We come to shows with our culture. They can't be made, or watched, in a clean room. And that can be very frustrating when trying to look at something as unlike as Buffy (female-dominated cast, female heroes) is.
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It's like the problem of rape on the show. Yes, lots of the show actually talks about rape. Some of the show is an allegory for rape. But bad things happen to women on the show that aren't about rape or about gender, but are about the fact that Bad Things Happen to Heroes on TV, but it's hard to know what falls into what categories, so despite my feeling that Whedon is preoccupied with rape issues in a way that doesn't always serve the purpose I think he wants his discussion of them to serve, all violence that occurs against female characters on Buffy is not actually about rape. However, figuring out what is and isn't about rape, when society and experience and often the show itself tells us that everything comes down to sexual violence makes the analysis practically impossible to do and obscures whatever it is the show is trying to say about rape as much as it obscures whatever it is the show is trying to say about other types of violence/training/tragedy both in and outside gendered terms.
We come to shows with our culture. They can't be made, or watched, in a clean room. And that can be very frustrating when trying to look at something as unlike as Buffy (female-dominated cast, female heroes) is.