Anthony Stewart Head's Enduring Model Of Positive Masculinity
We'll miss you, Mr. Giles.
Actor Anthony Stewart Head passed away last Friday. It’s been that kind of year. I first encountered Head as the dashing romantic lead in the serialized Taster’s Choice commercials from the late 1980s/early 1990s. He successfully made freeze-dried coffee seem sophisticated and sexy. Not even the American accent diminished his charms. (Watch below.)
Head is best known, of course, for playing Rupert Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 1997 until 2003. Posing as Sunnydale High School’s very English librarian, Giles was Buffy’s “Watcher,” who was tasked with preparing the Slayer to fight demonic forces, as well as general adolescent turmoil. He did far more than just watch over Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), though. He soon became the reliable father figure for both Buffy — whose own father was MIA — and her teen allies, known as the “Scooby Gang.”
It turns out this wasn’t just a part Head played on TV. His Buffy co-stars have all posted moving tributes to him on social media, and the consistent theme is that the then-40something actor set an example for his younger colleagues.
“Tell Giles I figured it out and I’m ok” Sarah Michelle Gellar posted on Instagram — quoting what Buffy said before she sacrificed herself to save the world. “Well I don’t have it figured out and I’m not ok. But I know I’m the lucky one because I knew you. Thank you to Daisy and Emily who not only shared their dad with me, but with the world.”
Giles was a compelling model of masculinity, and perhaps a very relevant one for today’s politics. He wasn’t always the urbane Watcher, nor had he lived an unblemished life. In his youth, he went by the “trying too hard” handle “Ripper.” A college drop-out, he was involved with a gang of dark arts practitioners, and one of his friends died when they summoned the demon Eyghon. I’ll never understand what people expect will happen when they summon the Devil or even random demons. They’re not gonna tap dance for you or bring you a pizza in 30 minutes. Giles eventually found redemption and a higher purpose as a Watcher, although he would often have to answer for the mistakes of his past. (Watch below.)
However, Giles the character in many ways represented the limits of series creator Joss Whedon’s supposed feminism. After all, this key role in Buffy’s life — the inspiring mentor — was an older man not a woman (more than 80 percent of librarians are women, by the way). Buffy never had a strong relationship with a woman over the age of 40. The one woman Watcher we meet in Season 3, Gwendolyn Post (Serena Scott Thomas), is evil and dies a Disney villain death.
When Buffy starts college in Season 4, she briefly considers Professor Maggie Walsh (Lindsay Crouse) a potential mentor, but instead Walsh feels threatened by Buffy’s relationship with her protege Riley and tries to have her killed. (Watch below.)
Even Buffy’s own mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) isn’t that encouraging of Buffy’s duties as the Slayer. She tends to take a whole “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach to this core part of Buffy’s identity.
In the Season 2 finale, Buffy comes out to her mother, and Joyce says flatly, “I don’t accept that.” It’s a gut-wrenching scene, one perhaps all too familiar to queer viewers.
BUFFY: Open your eyes, Mom. What do you think has been going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences... How many times have you washed blood out of my clothing? And you still haven’t figured it out?
JOYCE: Well, it stops now!
BUFFY: No, it doesn’t stop! It never stops! Do-Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV, or gossiping about boys or, God, even studying! But I have to save the world. Again!
Buffy is at her lowest point, but her mother doesn’t support her. She kicks her 17-year-old daughter out of her own home. Contrast this to a previous bleak moment for Buffy: She and Angel (David Boreanaz) had sex, which caused him to lose his soul and revert into a vicious monster. (Yes, she was also 17 when she hooked up with the 250-year-old vampire. It’s best not to dwell on it.) After stopping Angel’s first soulless killing spree, she breaks down in front of Giles, who consoles her not as a Watcher but as a loving parent. (Watch below.)
BUFFY: You must be so disappointed in me.
GILES: No. No. No, I’m not.
BUFFY: This is all my fault.
GILES: No. I don’t believe it is. Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly? You did, and I can... I know that you loved him. And he... has proven more than once that he loved you. You couldn’t have known what would happen... The coming months a-are gonna- are gonna be hard... I-I suspect on all of us. But... if it’s guilt you’re looking for, Buffy, I’m-I’m not your man. All you will get from me is, is my support... and my respect.
Head’s moving performance here is just one example of why his former Buffy co-stars have praised him as the best actor in the cast. Yet, I can’t help but imagine this scene’s impact if Giles were a woman. You don’t need to gender swap Joyce, either. The clueless, stifling parent and the understanding, nurturing mentor is a dynamic that could easily reflect all aspects of femininity.
Joyce did try to improve her relationship with Buffy in later seasons, but she was never fully part of the show’s action. She offered a domestic oasis. Even vampire Spike (James Marsters) enjoyed her hot cocoa with mini marshmallows. But as the show’s only recurring example of a woman over 40, this could prove limiting for any young women watching the show. They could immediately identify with Buffy or Willow (Alyson Hannigan) but Joyce was perhaps too much like the mother they already knew and not the woman they’d want to become. That’s what was so unfortunate about Hulu pulling the plug on a Buffy reboot. Sarah Michelle Gellar, now playing a Buffy well into her 40s, could have served as the new slayer’s Watcher: A maternal figure with a messy past but possessing a heroic spirt, someone ready to confront a complicated world head on and not hide from it.
Nonetheless, I am grateful for the version of Giles Anthony Stewart Head brought to the screen. His strength was in his wisdom, compassion, and fallible humanity. Watching Buffy in my 20s, Giles definitely inspired my fashion sense and predicted the middle-aged man I’d become (or perhaps already was).
Thank you very much for this retrospective on what Anthony Head brought to the show and his fellow cast mates… as well as on the show’s lack of adult female role models from Joss (who we now know is a bit of a mess himself). At 71 years old, I’m about the same age as Anthony Head was when he died. I mention this because I watched “Buffy” when it first aired and his Giles was a role model to me (my real father was not a good man … so not a role model at all). I am as grateful for the inspiration he gave his contemporaries back then as the father figure he was to young people. And I’ve since read he was a wonderfully compassionate person in real life too.
Rest In Peace, Anthony Head. 🙏🏻😔💔🕊️
Lovely. Thx, SER.