A Star Wars Actor Was Put In His Place After Criticizing Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Now, as influential as “Buffy” was, it also had its fair share of flaws in feminist messaging. For one thing, the series creator was accused of misconduct by several actresses in the series, including Charisma Carpenter and Michelle Trachtenberg — the allegations against Whedon were documented thoroughly by Vulture in 2022.

As empowering as the WB series may be, its central metaphor is the brainchild of an incredibly troubled male psyche, the projection of a covertly misogynistic ego. Whedon even admitted himself that Buffy, the figure of the unlikely hero, is simply “a pathetically obvious metaphor for what I wanted my life to be.” After feeling as though he had been overlooked his whole life — perhaps largely by women — “Buffy” was Whedon’s opportunity to make people listen. 

“Like, ‘I’m the guy that nobody paid attention to,'” he elaborated. “What they didn’t know was that I’m really important. I can save the world. So, you know, that’s pretty cool, too.”

With “Buffy,” Whedon intended to make something more entertaining than ideological — “to make a feminist show that didn’t make people feel like they were being lectured to,” as he put it in conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. However, he recognizes that calling the show feminist means trying to measure it against ever-changing standards.

“I’ve said before, when you declare yourself politically, you destroy yourself artistically,” he told Buzzfeed in 2015. “Because suddenly that’s the litmus test for everything you do — for example, in my case, feminism. If you don’t live up to the litmus test of feminism in this one instance, then you’re a misogynist. It circles directly back upon you.”

Whether “Buffy” lives up to the standards of feminist ethics or not, there’s no question that it changed a few minds about what a woman can do, and a major “Star Wars” actor was one of them.