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Feb. 21st, 2021 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Hmmm...this is an interesting essay, which I kind of disagree with.
Buffy Revisited Through Whedon Allegations
I honestly think you can analyze anything a certain way if you want to badly enough. I remember my brother and his friend trying to convince me that the soap opera The Guiding Light's - iconic lighthouse was a phallic symbol. (Uh, no. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar folks.)
Here, I'm kind of going yes, okay, possibly, nodding along until I hit this paragraph:
An example of this is one of the most awful episodes, when Spike attempts to rape Buffy. The scene is stomach-churning, not in the least because it is played for maximum distress (and traumatized actors during filming). This scene pokes another hole in Whedon's self-proclaimed feminism: that women can only be really strong if the source of their power comes from their sexuality or from "overcoming" trauma. Of course Faith, another slayer, is promiscuous. Of course sex with Buffy turns Angel evil — her sexualized teen body is that powerful.
The rape scene seems totally out of character and to come out of nowhere, though Whedon stated his reasoning was to remind viewers that Spike is a vampire and therefore "soulless." What's the easiest way to do that? Have a sympathetic and frankly, non-toxic male character suddenly rape.
So, did this woman skip S2? Or miss the fact that Spike was set up as a sexual predator in S2 - S6?
Also, the idea for that scene wasn't Whedon's - but Marti, and it was written by Deknight, Jane Espenson, and I think David Fury. They famously did a podcast interview after it aired and broke it down with the interviewers on the Succubus Club, we all transcribed it for Buffy fanboards.
See this is the problem with people re-watching things after they find out personal or private information about what has happening behind the scenes, the details of which are incredibly vague, and reported twenty years after the fact, and various parties staying silent regarding them. You want to read all sorts of crazy things into it.
I was taught not to do that in undergrad - and to be careful to apply a more critical and objective eye.
Also, Spike - "A Non-toxic male character" ??? This person was not on the same Buffy boards that I was on. I had to re-read that sentence twice.
"Out of nowhere?" - I saw it coming a mile away. I mean they kept foreshadowing it.
Also part of the point of Buffy was a critique of toxic male culture in violent westerns and slasher pictures in the 1970s-90s. Buffy started in the 1990s - and in direct reaction to horror films like Scream, which had popped up shortly before it. It was satirizing a lot of that toxic male culture.
With Buffy taking out the male vampires - often a metaphor for sexual violence with a phallic symbol - the stake. It explored the misogynistic nerd as the villains, and their inability to handle women. They were shown as the villains and weak. Notably no male has power in Buffy, unless they become a vampire or are turned into a monster.
The women have the power.
2. I also saw an essay about Xander as the epitome of misogyny. Really? I think you are confusing him with Warren. And there are quite a few women and men loved Xander and did not see him that way. I may have disagreed with them at times, but I can see their perspective. And could defend it. I have defended it - in numerous essays.
Quiet Misogyny in Buffy
Huh? I'm sorry, the writers were blatantly exposing the misogyny in our culture and calling our attention to it. It wasn't celebrating it - just the opposite. Willow's scene in Villains with Warren - dissects misogyny at its base. And in S7 Buffy takes down the bad guy - a misogynist empowered by the First Evil - who has given birth to vampires. The vampires in Whedon's stories are in a part a metaphor for sexual violence and misogyny.
He's showing the reality of it. It's not exploitive or romanticized. It's painful and horrifying. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a horror series, it wasn't a romantic teen soap like the Vampire Diaries and Legacies. It was horror. Horror isn't nice and fuzzy.
They were showing the dark side of human nature and questioning it. There's a lot of good stuff in this series. Don't dismiss it out of hand or review it based on what may have happened twenty years ago to several cast members behind the scenes. I seriously doubt anyone who came forward would want you to view their work or the series in that manner.
SMG pretty much states that, as does everyone else. It was a toxic work environment but the end product is still meaningful. You can separate behavior from a person and from art, it is possible. It just requires a little critical thinking to do so.
3. I think Screen Logic's essay handles it best... A Teachable Moment in Cognitive Dissonance After Joss Whedon
Many People Worked Hard on These Projects Beyond the Disgraced Figures
My answer is simply "Yes." You can still appreciate the art and those involved while tempering who you praise in the process. There was still a final season of House of Cards despite the allegations against star Kevin Spacey, who was fired prior to filming. You can still enjoy the work of the X-Men franchise even after what people found out about Bryan Singer. I don't think it's fair to judge anyone regardless if they support or identify as part of the LGBTQ community if they still love the Harry Potter franchise despite J.K. Rowling's TERF beliefs.
It's hard to keep track of everything because what's done is already done, and nothing is going to erase what's in the can. We can only do things that affect the present and in the future. Obviously, there's a line of which you can't think of things the same way again, but at the same time, a lot of hard-working people put in their soul to create what you love. Can you imagine shuttering away in a vault every single thing that had Harvey Weinstein's name on it? It would deprive such a significant piece of cinema history away that doesn't make any practical sense to punish those who weren't involved. The way we learn and what is a teachable moment is to just speak up while we can and do what we can now because the worst that can happen is nothing is said, and suffering continues.
I agree. I'm not sure it matters right now, what these people did in the past as a pandemic roars in the background. The US is pretty close to the 500,000 death milestone. We've lost 500,000 people to COVID-19 in this country.
And we're addressing toxic workplaces and hunting ways to stop them. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but we are making progress.
Buffy Revisited Through Whedon Allegations
I honestly think you can analyze anything a certain way if you want to badly enough. I remember my brother and his friend trying to convince me that the soap opera The Guiding Light's - iconic lighthouse was a phallic symbol. (Uh, no. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar folks.)
Here, I'm kind of going yes, okay, possibly, nodding along until I hit this paragraph:
An example of this is one of the most awful episodes, when Spike attempts to rape Buffy. The scene is stomach-churning, not in the least because it is played for maximum distress (and traumatized actors during filming). This scene pokes another hole in Whedon's self-proclaimed feminism: that women can only be really strong if the source of their power comes from their sexuality or from "overcoming" trauma. Of course Faith, another slayer, is promiscuous. Of course sex with Buffy turns Angel evil — her sexualized teen body is that powerful.
The rape scene seems totally out of character and to come out of nowhere, though Whedon stated his reasoning was to remind viewers that Spike is a vampire and therefore "soulless." What's the easiest way to do that? Have a sympathetic and frankly, non-toxic male character suddenly rape.
So, did this woman skip S2? Or miss the fact that Spike was set up as a sexual predator in S2 - S6?
Also, the idea for that scene wasn't Whedon's - but Marti, and it was written by Deknight, Jane Espenson, and I think David Fury. They famously did a podcast interview after it aired and broke it down with the interviewers on the Succubus Club, we all transcribed it for Buffy fanboards.
See this is the problem with people re-watching things after they find out personal or private information about what has happening behind the scenes, the details of which are incredibly vague, and reported twenty years after the fact, and various parties staying silent regarding them. You want to read all sorts of crazy things into it.
I was taught not to do that in undergrad - and to be careful to apply a more critical and objective eye.
Also, Spike - "A Non-toxic male character" ??? This person was not on the same Buffy boards that I was on. I had to re-read that sentence twice.
"Out of nowhere?" - I saw it coming a mile away. I mean they kept foreshadowing it.
Also part of the point of Buffy was a critique of toxic male culture in violent westerns and slasher pictures in the 1970s-90s. Buffy started in the 1990s - and in direct reaction to horror films like Scream, which had popped up shortly before it. It was satirizing a lot of that toxic male culture.
With Buffy taking out the male vampires - often a metaphor for sexual violence with a phallic symbol - the stake. It explored the misogynistic nerd as the villains, and their inability to handle women. They were shown as the villains and weak. Notably no male has power in Buffy, unless they become a vampire or are turned into a monster.
The women have the power.
2. I also saw an essay about Xander as the epitome of misogyny. Really? I think you are confusing him with Warren. And there are quite a few women and men loved Xander and did not see him that way. I may have disagreed with them at times, but I can see their perspective. And could defend it. I have defended it - in numerous essays.
Quiet Misogyny in Buffy
Huh? I'm sorry, the writers were blatantly exposing the misogyny in our culture and calling our attention to it. It wasn't celebrating it - just the opposite. Willow's scene in Villains with Warren - dissects misogyny at its base. And in S7 Buffy takes down the bad guy - a misogynist empowered by the First Evil - who has given birth to vampires. The vampires in Whedon's stories are in a part a metaphor for sexual violence and misogyny.
He's showing the reality of it. It's not exploitive or romanticized. It's painful and horrifying. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a horror series, it wasn't a romantic teen soap like the Vampire Diaries and Legacies. It was horror. Horror isn't nice and fuzzy.
They were showing the dark side of human nature and questioning it. There's a lot of good stuff in this series. Don't dismiss it out of hand or review it based on what may have happened twenty years ago to several cast members behind the scenes. I seriously doubt anyone who came forward would want you to view their work or the series in that manner.
SMG pretty much states that, as does everyone else. It was a toxic work environment but the end product is still meaningful. You can separate behavior from a person and from art, it is possible. It just requires a little critical thinking to do so.
3. I think Screen Logic's essay handles it best... A Teachable Moment in Cognitive Dissonance After Joss Whedon
Many People Worked Hard on These Projects Beyond the Disgraced Figures
My answer is simply "Yes." You can still appreciate the art and those involved while tempering who you praise in the process. There was still a final season of House of Cards despite the allegations against star Kevin Spacey, who was fired prior to filming. You can still enjoy the work of the X-Men franchise even after what people found out about Bryan Singer. I don't think it's fair to judge anyone regardless if they support or identify as part of the LGBTQ community if they still love the Harry Potter franchise despite J.K. Rowling's TERF beliefs.
It's hard to keep track of everything because what's done is already done, and nothing is going to erase what's in the can. We can only do things that affect the present and in the future. Obviously, there's a line of which you can't think of things the same way again, but at the same time, a lot of hard-working people put in their soul to create what you love. Can you imagine shuttering away in a vault every single thing that had Harvey Weinstein's name on it? It would deprive such a significant piece of cinema history away that doesn't make any practical sense to punish those who weren't involved. The way we learn and what is a teachable moment is to just speak up while we can and do what we can now because the worst that can happen is nothing is said, and suffering continues.
I agree. I'm not sure it matters right now, what these people did in the past as a pandemic roars in the background. The US is pretty close to the 500,000 death milestone. We've lost 500,000 people to COVID-19 in this country.
And we're addressing toxic workplaces and hunting ways to stop them. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but we are making progress.