Replying to Onebyone
Jan. 8th, 2003 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
triskellianBateleur II was me:
Nope; it was Bateleur's comment about Buffy not being qualified to be a feminist icon that I was disagreeing with, not your comment about feminism representing women doing the things they've been complaining about men doing for centuries ;-)
In fact, from my practically non-existent knowledge of feminism - or, more accurately, public perceptions of feminism - that aspect is something I don't like either. The word itself is too much associated with female power (at the expense of men, or as some sort of payback to men), and not enough with equality.
Yes it is. But if the traditional hero-type things of men wandering around, trampling the bad guys beneath your boot, and picking up the under-clad girl are sexist, then it is because of unreasonably one-sided interactions based on domination. In this case, by the hero.
Yeah, but Buffy doesn't pick up a pretty-boy in his boxers after she's done kicking the ass of the bad guys, does she? Or, for that matter, slope off for some hot lovin' with Willow, because men are redundant? She likes men, and has reasonably equal relationships with them. She's powerful, and so are they. In fact, in all three cases, she's fought alongside them, with no particular inequality.
Which feels to me much more like the kind of female-empowerment I'd like.
That's what I mean by that which is bad within feminism - the understandable tendency of the abused to instinctively want to reverse the situation, rather than wanting to end it.
Yup, and I'm entirely in agreement with you on this.
explaining to him that some people are supposed to be successful and happy, whereas other people just don't deserve to be and shouldn't try to achieve that by cheating.
You should just get the teasing over with now, cos I've looked up the lines, and I'm going to quote them at you. Yes, I'm a sad Buffyholic. So sue me.
Buffy: Jonathan you get why everyone is angry though, right? It's not just the monster. People didn't like being the little actors in your sock puppet theater
Jonathan: "You weren't! You weren't socks! We were friends."
Buffy: "Jonathan you can't keep trying to make everything work out with some big gesture all at once. Things are complicated. They take time and work."
Jonathan: "Yeah, right."
Which makes more sense than your version ;-)
For me, this does not particularly recommend Buffy as a role model. It's bourne out throughout all the series, as much as I've seen them, by how upset Buffy tends to get with anyone who challenges her position as the best at killing vampires.
Whereas I've always interpreted that as her trying to wring something good (being special) out of the otherwise fairly sucky situation she's in.
Re: 'Equality'?
Date: 2003-01-09 04:14 am (UTC)I don't know. I guess I see it as different sorts of equality. In a rather vague and ill-defined way.
In series 6, there's a fair amount of Buffy and Spike being friends - she confides in him when she can't confide in any of the others. In series 7 - what I've seen so far - he's gone mad, and probably possessed by the big bad, or something similar, and she looks out for him. She brings him out of a dangerous environment and arranges somewhere safe for him to stay. She doesn't believe stories told of his wrong-doing. Which kinda buggers my earlier point about no rescuing being needed ;-)
But the 'treating him like scum' parts of the relationship always seemed to me more like her being pissed off with herself, and taking it out on him. She's a vampire slayer, and with Angel, she had an excuse for the relationship; with Spike, she didn't. She was just shagging a vampire, something entirely at odds with her life's work. And he did behave like an arse. A lot. All of the 'you're bad like me, you know you are, you like it dirty, oh yeah' stuff was a bit much ;-)
So I do think there's equality there in some fundamental way. He loves her more than she loves him, and he's more comfortable with dark aspects of personalities and relationships that freak her out, and she reacts badly to that, but I don't think those things affect the equality of the relationship, in a male-female-power-balance kinda way.
I'm not entirely sure how I got into this whole argument, y'know ;-) I've not said I think the whole show is a great example of feminist and/or equality-promoting TV. I *do* think it's balance-redressing to an extent, and has paved the way for the various other cute-chick-kicking-ass shows that are around, but if I were to pick my favourite political-ish message from Buffy, it would be more to do with geek/outcast/weirdo recognition.
Re: 'Equality'?
Date: 2003-01-09 04:28 am (UTC)At which point i'd be almost forced to say that they didn't even do that properly. They just got their own version of the popular clique and treat outsiders badly. Hardly the thing to encourage ;-)
What did those three Geek bad guy kids (sorry don't watch enought Buffy to remember their names, plot relevence) do for the geek kid image?
Or I could just not say anything....unlikely though ;-)
Re: 'Equality'?
Date: 2003-01-09 05:38 am (UTC)But I don't think they do particularly treat outsiders badly. And... oh shit. This is going to be the whole argument all over again from the point of view of a different opressed section of society, isn't it?
I'm a girl, and I guess I'm a geek, too (in fact, I just got called an anorak over lunch by one of my colleagues). I like Buffy. There are girls and geeks in Buffy, and they are portrayed broadly positively. This is a good thing.
Re: 'Equality'?
The 'Geek Chic' trend over the last decade or so has been remarked upon in innumerable places by many commentators (I first saw the phrase on Slashdot).
Basically, we now live in such a tech-oriented culture that a certain kind of geekiness (in the style of, for example, Willow) is an entirely acceptable mainstream archetype.
Buffy's take on this is really not terribly progressive or adventurous. At least Neo (in 'The Matrix') is seen alone in his room doing geek things and looks thoroughly out of place in a nightclub.
Misfits
I meant the people who aren't in the popular group at school. The ones who wear black, or roleplay or who are too clever for popularity, or whatever. Y'know, the people that most of us were to some extent.
I'm much happier that there's a cool TV show about high school social outcasts doing cool and exciting stuff than I am that there's a cool TV show with a girl kicking butt.
Re: Misfits
Yes, exactly.
This is my point: Buffy is not about people like me. The characters start out as high school kids and during this time they do things like dating, being pants in lessons, being well dressed, hanging out at The Bronze, etc. In short, they behave exactly like the kinds of people I seldom exchanged two words with at school but with notional 'subculture' status tacked on rather unconvincingly.
Of course I expect there is an element of wish fulfillment to the whole thing in that the majority of kids marginalized at school would love to look cool, come out with snappy dialogue and generally beat the in-crowd at their own game (cf. Cordelia and Harmony's eventual fates).
But still, if I designed the characters for a show like Buffy the feel would be more than a little different.
Joss can play at artistic integrity all he likes - the fact is that his "strong female character" could've been designed by FHM and his idea of subculture is so mainstream that it's the speculative fiction equivalent of 'Classical FM'. Yes, I watch Buffy - but then I also listen to the Radio 1 breakfast show and really the quality difference between the two isn't all that great.
And there's nothing funnier than spotting the episodes that stick out like a sore thumb as the Buffy crew desperately try to win a Grammy. <snigger>
Re: 'Equality'?
Date: 2003-01-09 10:24 am (UTC)Oh god, why am I even saying this......