BLONDE ON BLONDE

"If I had the Slayer's power ... I'd be punning right about now."

The year was 1997 and a new series debuted on the WB network with the unlikely and unpromising title Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Based on the critically reviled 1992 film of the same name, few would have anticipated that the series would soon become one of the most beloved television series of all time and pave the way for a succession of empowered female protagonists on television, including Sydney Bristow on Alias, the titular Veronica Mars, Battlestar Galactica's cigar-chomping Kara Thrace, and later Gwendoline Christie's noble Brienne of Tarth on Game of Thrones — not to mention The Walking Dead's badass katana-wielding Michonne, among others.

In the wake of the jingoistic, testosterone-fueled action fantasies of the '80s with Sylvester Stallone refighting and winning the Vietnam War in Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger mowing down hundreds if not thousands of adversaries, female heroes were few and far between. It's ironic given the dominance of such smart-mouthed and capable women like Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo in the screwball comedies of the 1930s like It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, Bringing Up Baby, and Ninotchka, which paved the way for the powerful Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner in noirs of the '40s like Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. But women had rarely been considered action heroines; more often, they were the damsel in distress or, more likely, the scantily clad love interest for Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Norris, who seemed more interested in stroking their weapons than their women. But that was all about to change. Ridley Scott introduced a new kind of female protagonist in 1979's Alien with Sigourney Weaver's smart, savvy, and sexy Ripley, and James Cameron took her matriarchal (and Xenomorph-slaying) power to a whole new level in Aliens a few years later.

By 1993 there was Johnnie To's The Heroic Trio, a kickass Hong Kong chopsocky in which a trio of female superheroes defeats an evil master who is raising kidnapped children into a superarmy. Sound vaguely familiar?

But it was in the year 1997 that a new and thoroughly unexpected female superhero debuted on television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As in the great Stan Lee comics of the '60s, this was a superhero who knew that with great power comes great responsibility (even if Buffy was more X-Men's Kitty Pryde than Spider-Man's Peter Parker) and who also found that her everyday problems as a student at Sunnydale High School often far exceeded the challenges created by her birthright as a vampire slayer.

It is a show that changed the small screen forever, and, while it'd be hard to consider television an auteurist medium, Buffy is one of the few shows whose success and tone can be almost entirely credited to one man, Joss Whedon, the visionary writer/director/producer who brought the Slayer to life ... death ... and life again.

JOSS WHEDON (creator/executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Buffy came from watching a horror movie and seeing the typical ditzy blonde walk into a dark alley and getting killed. I just thought that I would love to see a scene where the ditzy blonde walks into a dark alley, a monster attacks her, and she kicks its ass. So the concept was real simple. After all those times of seeing the poor girl who had sex and got killed, I just wanted to give her the power back.

SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR (actress, Buffy Summers)

For a long time I think there was a lack of strong female characters on television, especially for young people, and it's so hard because that's the age you really want to identify with someone. You want to have a hero and the thing I liked about Buffy, and Willow as well as Cordelia, is that they are OK with who they are. They're not the most popular or the most beautiful at school. Willow is the smartest, but they're OK with who they are and there's a comfort in their individuality.

SARAH LEMELMAN (author, "It's About Power": Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Stab at Establishing the Strength of Girls on American Television)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was revolutionary for its time as it created fresh images of females, and demonstrated this to an important demographic — young teenage girls — who are fed all sorts of conflicting and dispiriting representations of women. The show established that girls no longer had to adhere to the standards for females in society. Buffy showed that it was not acceptable for girls and women alike to degrade themselves in order to fit into society, as society should accept all versions of females — ladylike or virile, timid or outgoing, polite or crass, and even heterosexual or homosexual, among many other conflicting personalities and characteristics for women and girls.

ANTHONY C. FERRANTE (director, Sharknado)

Whereas in most horror movies, the female lead became a "survivor," Buffy's female lead became a "hero." She didn't need to become ripped like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 or Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. She was able to be feminine and tough at the same time. The magic of Buffy is that you could relate to her. She still had insecurities, needs, and desires, but at her core she also had to be a hero and a fighter to save herself and the ones she loved.

SARAH LEMELMAN

The world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a refreshing escape for the female sex. Women were seen enacting change on their own accord, and were equalized to — if not stronger than — men. Buffy asserted that women could, in fact, be valued in society. Unlike its predecessors in Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman,Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed that young teenage girls could be powerful, too. The members of its cast became role models for girls to escape demeaning female stereotypes that had been laid down for so long and instead showed girls that it was perfectly acceptable to define themselves.

ANTHONY C. FERRANTE

Ripley [in Alien] started out a...