What would you say is the difference between a work that just happens to have well-written female characters and a "feminist work"?
From the idea of feminism as simply seeking equality (as Marmie Dearest states it), I wouldn’t say there’s a difference between the two. By how much the messages of a work espouse this equality is how I’ll split them up into implicitly feminist works and explicitly feminist works (without making any judgments about which is “better†because both are awesome and better).
And ‘cause I hate all this talking about nothing, I will use the show
Parks and Recreation as an example.
Parks and Rec is for the most part an implicitly feminist show. Its main character Leslie Knope is a wonderfully round character: she loves her job, she’s optimistic, she’s pushy, she’s stubborn, she’s efficient, she’s a feminist, she’s been hung up on one guy, she’s dated around, etc. Likewise, the secondary female characters April and Ann also get complicated characterizations. There is also large cast of female supporting and recurring characters who obviously fit into more typical oddball sitcom roles. Collectively all these women display a wide variety of temperments, occupations, etc. For example, two very different female antagonists on the show have included overeacting conservative Christian Marcia Langman and manipulative seductress Tammy Swanson. (A clip about Leslie’s “Galentine’s Day†traditions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YppgGMxyeJI
Leslie’s relationship with her best friend Ann is complex and supportive and given significant screen time (and is conceived to be the center of the show). When they have their first major fight in the episode “The Fightâ€, their epic argument includes grievances about their current love lives, but is at heart about Leslie wishing to push Ann’s career ambitions (in other words, not about men). Here’s the clip I haven’t figured out how to embed:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/239947/parks-and-recreation-the-fight?c=695:793.
Simply by the nature of having a great female main character in Leslie**, having many varied female characters, paying attention to women’s relationships with other women (as much as their relationship with men or men’s relationships with each other), I consider
Parks and Recreation a very feminist show.
**and portraying her so well respected and loved by her friends. And I'd argue, to the extent that she is an admirable character.
But
Parks occasionally has episodes that are explicitly feminist, in that the show directly comments on feminist issues. The episode “Beauty Pageantâ€, for example, has the very feminist Leslie on a judging panel and trying (and ultimately failing) to convince the other judges to choose a winner based on other qualities than physical looks. This storyline besides commenting on the superficiality of judging women by their beauty and emphatizing with Leslie on her failure to change the outcome of the competition, also exposes that losing such arbitrary contests is not ultimately, a great setback for the women of ‘substance’ (nor winning a great boon). This A story further relates to a different feminist issue in the B story, in which Leslie has doubts about a potential love interest because he doesn’t know anything about her female political icons (Thatcher, Rice, Clinton, Roosevelt), but ultimately gives him a chance because while he doesn’t know, he treats women with respect and is willing to learn about her interests. Moments within episodes can also be explicitly feminist, for example, in this scene which pokes fun at horrible sexist stereotypes (when Leslie is trying to cover for a friend who accidently shoots a colleague on a department hunting trip):
http://www.hulu.com/watch/110482/parks-and-recreation-im-just-a-girl#x-4,vclip,6,0
(By constrast, I’d consider
Buffy the Vampire Slayer a show that is much more frequently an explicitly feminist show. Creator Joss Whedon on why he created the show: “The first thing I ever thought of when I thought of
Buffy was the little… blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed, in every horror movie. The idea of
Buffy was to subvert that idea, that image, and create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim.†Thus, Buffy the character much more often has struggles that relate directly to feminist issues. Hell, it’s in the title of the series itself: the ridiculous juxtaposition of her throwback 50s ‘girly’ name with “slayerâ€. But the series goes to show that it’s not so ridiculous at all, that a girl who simply wants to go to the school dance can also be the one force that saves the world, and that Buffy’s great strength comes just as much from her roles as friend, daughter, sister and her normal everyday desires to have a boyfriend, a career, etc. as her superpowers.)