prixmium: (rose tyler - series 1 pink)
Prix ([personal profile] prixmium) wrote2020-09-26 08:51 pm

Blonde Horror-Survivor Archetype?

Another thought as I am watching some episodes of Buffy is that this is a few years before 2005 Doctor Who. Anthony Stewart Head guest-starred as an evil headmaster in an episode of Doctor Who S2, so there's obviously some cross-media/universe awareness there on RTD's part.

I remember back when I was a tween/teenager when I first developed a passing interesting in Buffy that a friend of mine who was a couple years older explained to me the underlying image/concept that supposedly inspired Buffy's character. Basically, it was supposed to be a subversion of the cutesy, popular blonde girl being dumb and incompetent and the first one to die in the horror genre.

While I'm long-since over Joss Whedon tooting his own horn about how he mastered and graduated feminism, I still think that's an interesting vibe, and I wonder if Rose Tyler is also greatly inspired by that. I know that one thing that went into inspiring Rose was her working class background and that she was a character who belonged "on a British soap opera," at the time, but Doctor Who dabbles in a lot of horror elements while softening them in the conclusion.

I definitely think that there's at least some food for thought there, though.

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