Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1.3

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   The third episode in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer tells a story of a mother wanting to relive her past through her daughter's life. The mother is a witch, therefore she has the power to switch bodies with her daughter forcing her daughter Amy to stay home all day in a middle aged woman's body while she goes to school and continuously tries to make the cheer team. Buffy and her crew follow a variety of leads in order to track down the witch and get their friend Amy her normal life back. This episode in general portrayed many examples of gender roles and performances through the character's actions. Men didn't seem to play any large roles in this episode, it was mainly women dominated in all aspects of good and evil. The main topic that will be analyzed in this blog is the way in which the cheerleaders were portrayed throughout the episode. 

The physical portrayal of the cheerleaders was one of the stereotypical ways that the producers made the cheerleaders out to be. Their skirts were all very short and the shirt was a cropped low-cut V neck that was very stereotypical for the "slutty" cheerleader view society has. Shown in the episode when Buffy arrived at tryouts, many of the girls are dressed in tight form fitting clothes. For example, Cordelia is wearing a tight black sports bra with tight black spandex shorts revealing much of her body. Also shown in the episode, all the girls who were trying out for the team were very skinny and toned. The producer's choice to dress and cast the cheerleaders in these ways was definitely not an accident. Society has very present ideas about the way a cheerleader should look. In many movies they are all stick skinny with long hair and dressed in minimal clothing. Cheerleaders are also usually portrayed to always be cheering on the sidelines for men which is what they are doing in this episode. Although this is how many movies portray them, cheerleading today is one of the most intensive sports that requires tons of strength and skill not just a pretty face. 

Another way this episode stereotypically portrayed the cheerleaders was through their behaviors throughout the show. As evidenced, at try outs many of the girls seemed to be the mean popular girls leading Buffy and Amy to look like outcasts. The part in the episode when one of the main cheerleaders was performing her dance, showed her to seem very popular and like she knew she was all that. The most prominent example was when Cordelia cornered Amy in the locker room, got in her face and said that if she didn't make the team because of Amy's mistake Amy was going to be very sorry about it. This showed Cordelia as the typical cheerleader being mean to outcast cheerleaders like Amy for making a mistake. Mean girls are always seen to be on top of the popularity hierarchy while the nice innocent girls seem to always be pushed to the bottom when looking in from a societies point of view. Another way in which they showed the cliché cheerleader personality was when the team sent out the list of who made the team. When the girls saw they made it they screeched and jumped up and down disregarding the feelings of the girls who didn't make it such as Buffy and Amy. Portraying the cheerleaders as mean girls is something that again many movies and tv shows do. This gives the audience the thoughts that again all cheerleaders are mean and ditzy even though in many real-life situations that is not the case. 

In conclusion, the writers of the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer definitely made sure to show the cheerleading team of Sunnydale as the stereotypical cheerleaders. With their skinny waists, mean girl attitudes, and short skirts there was no doubt that they were cheerleaders. Although society has many cliché notions about cheerleaders there are many tv shows and movies that have come out proving many of them all wrong. For example, the new original Netflix series Cheer and the popular movie series Bring it on show more real-life competitive cheerleading scenarios rather than just the well-known ditzy football cheerleaders. Although Buffy the Vampire Slayer breaks a lot of the social norms, it sticks to them when portraying the cheerleading team in this episode. 

Comments

  1. Lainey MastMarch 6, 2020 at 7:27 AM

    I really enjoyed your blog! I also analyzed this episode and found that it's presentation of cheerleading was problematic. I think it's really important that you mentioned that all the cheerleaders were conventionally attractive. I think this speaks to the stereotype that cheerleaders are shallow and vain, which further serves to discredit the sport.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Damian AndriulliMarch 10, 2020 at 1:15 PM

    I did not watch this episode but your blog made a lot of good points in how it stereotyped cheerleaders and now I kind of want to watch it to see everything that you pointed out.

    ReplyDelete

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