Is It Girl Power or Revivng Ophelia

Textual presentations, throughout history, have forever displayed cultural stereotypes and ideals in relation to gender and sexuality. With particular mention to textual presentations that deal with vampirism, the themes of gender and sexuality have often explored and expressed as to suit context and audience. Feminism and femininity, as major constituents of these themes, have transgressively been articulated in vampiric texts to suit sociological expressions and contextual ideals. However, throughout culturally accepted contemporary vampiric texts, of which include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Joss Whedon and Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, contrasting discourses in relation to feminism and femininity have been constructed and proposed. The author’s of these two texts, who have had a significant impact on the presentation of feminism and femininity as such, have constructed texts that match either the rather contemporary Girl Power presentation or the traditional Reviving Ophelia means.

‘Since the early 1990’s, popular media, popular literature, television, films, academic conferences, and special issues of feminist journals have been participants in an incredible proliferation of images, texts and discourses around girls and girlhood’. (Between Girl Power and Reviving Ophelia, Marina Gonick, Pg 1) Marina Gonick, in her critical article ‘Between Girl Power and Reviving Ophelia’ proposed and explored two contemporary feministic views applicable to such a context. These contrasting view, which had procured simultaneously in the 1990’s, were termed Girl Power, which ‘represents a new girl who is assertive, dynamic, and unbound from the constraints of passive femininity’, and Reviving Ophelia, which ‘presents girls as vulnerable, voiceless and fragile beings’. Through two culturally significant vampiric texts, Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Joss Whedon, these contrasting views are clearly applicable. Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire...