Before I begin, I’d like to warn any and all Buffy fans that this post is rife with spoilers for the entire Buffy series. I spoil the comics as well, if you’re not there yet, so beware. Beware! Now, on with the show.
What do you keep in your refrigerator? Is it carrots? Is it half a jar of yellowing mayonnaise? Is it the sliced-and-diced body of your girlfriend? Because that’s what the Green Lantern found in his, apparently. Not the mayonnaise, but the girlfriend. And it’s this fridge issue that seems to be cropping up everywhere in pop culture these days.
For those of you who’ve never heard of the Women in Refrigerators trend, I'll link to the wikipedia article, but I also found a lot of other fun sites. I especially enjoyed a certain blog post entitled “The Dolls in Topher’s Fridge”, but would like to reserve all Dollhouse discussion in this blog for a later date when I’ve had time to rewatch all the episodes. But if you’re into Dollhouse, I highly suggest checking it out.
Anyway, some online discussion led me to believe that Buffy is a series that exhibits WiR syndrome. It's hard for me to believe that a show like Buffy, that's clearly unlike most comic books just in the fact that it features a female lead instead of a male, could be a show where people believe the women are put in refrigerators, so to speak. After all, Jessie's death in the first episode seems like Joss was trying to set up his own precedent for the show right off the bat. The death of Jessie said anyone could die at any moment for any reason, with little to no warning, no matter how likeable they were. (Joyce's body in the corner of your screen a second before Buffy turned around? Yuh-huh.)
But in Jessie’s fatal encounter with the wrong side of a stake, Joss isn't just telling fans that this will be a series fraught with surprise and, well, death. To me Jessie's death is the anti-WiR death. For all the pretty little comic queens who are around just long enough to prove how much they matter to the main character and then die in a twisted way, there is Jessie, a young male, around just long enough to prove how much he matters as a friend to Xander, and then it's off to Dustville for the poor sap. I believe that in the seven television seasons of Buffy, none of the deaths can be called a Women in Refrigerator type of death, and that deaths like Jessie’s prove just how gender-equal the deaths are. Jessie was Buffy’s first ever damsel in distress.
Even Tara going crazy didn't last terribly long, and as much as people want to argue that Tara's death was a classic case of a women being...refrigeratored, it's a totally unmerited argument. Tara was a well-developed character and was around for more than just a gruesome death. I think the thing that sets the deaths in Buffy apart for me is that they aren't just done to motivate the main character to act. I believe Willow's reaction to Tara's death is a callback to the trend of comic book heroes charging off to avenge the gruesome deaths of their girlfriends, but Joss turns Willow’s would-be rightful rampage on its head. Though in the end Willow flays Warren alive, she also tries to kill Buffy and end the world, and has to spend a lot of re-coop time in the giant grassy field-filled rehab that is England, realizing that even though it may seem right, vengeance has its price.
But as much as I like the TV show, and as much as I can understand most of the deaths that happen, I wonder if the comic-book season eight of Buffy isn't falling into all the classic comic traps that Joss's TV show seem to be lampooning. Xander's love interest Renee is impaled by the newest baddie in a full blood-soaked page in the end of “Wolves at the Gate: Part 3”. I don’t know exactly how much influence Joss has on the actual writing of the comic book, so I’d like to think he’s somehow not involved.
So no women in fridges, at least on the TV Buffy. But can Joss turn the comic world around with Buffy season eight? Or will the Buffy franchise fall into line with the new medium it must inhabit?
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