But that doesn't excuse the fact that in a hero story about female empowerment, a white, blond, blue-eyed, pretty girl, with a lot of money - Harmony - appears to constantly get away with murder in the series. (snip) They never staked her - or punished her. Sure you can say the same thing about Angel and Spike - but we actually see both suffer (snip) But Harmony - considered a joke - well - the worst thing that appears to happen to her is Spike slaps her around a bit and breaks up with her?? (Which brings up a separate problem - the male vampires are able to seek redemption or be redeemed or live to seek it, while the female, not so much.
*Let us note, for a moment, the parallels between Harmony/Spike and Spike/Buffy for a moment. (and Harmony/Cordettes, Spike/Fanged Four) Soulless Spike's suffering relative to the suffering he caused is probably in proportion to Harmony's suffering, though in total I suspect Spike was actually the beneficiary of far more privilege than Harmony over his career.
But back to it - These are not seperate problems. They are one in the same. We do not see Harmony punished because we're not going to see her get Redemption. (She's a bimbo. She's not going to get redemption. Bimbos don't get redemption. Buffy and Cordy are special - they didn't grow out of bimbos - they we're never really bimbos all along and now they get to show us all.)
We don't want to see Harmony go after redemption. We want to keep her in the Paris Hilton box, where we can safely look down upon her as a bimbo and not expend any effort upon her. It allows us to hate the pretty privileged white girl and feel like special members of the elite club who are worthy of that investment. We can go back to that point on BtVS when Cordelia became a member of the circle and started moving toward heroism, and she became someone Willow couldn't hate anymore. But Harmony was safe to hate. And maybe Harmony is hate-able, but needing to have someone to hate isn't a sign of actualization...
We look at Spike. He's the one who said "I'm a soulless monster, but I can be a man" - were we allowing for that because we generally believed in the principle or just because he's special and we're indulging? If we generally believe in the principle, then we have to actually go beyond just doing it for Spike. Anybody can do favors for the people they actually like - commitment is extending that chance to someone they don't have a personal stake in. And within the context of BtVS/AtS, Harmony is the only case study we have.
And my general experience with fandom and the show has been that, whatever people said they believed about Redemption when the issue was Spike, they didn't believe in it when it came to Harmony.
Extending the privilege to people we aren't already predisposed to help is very, very hard. But it's sometimes the difference between a moral stance and an indulgence. That's one of the major problems "Disharmony" raised, particularly for people who saw themselves as Redemptionistas.
On the one hand, if we didn't know her, if she wasn't a part of the stock characters for the writers to re-use - Harmony wouldn't be allowed to live. On the other hand, if we liked her, if we let ourselves know her as a person (let alone part of the inner circle/inteligentsia) would we allow her to grow up and seek redemption.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 04:45 am (UTC)I don't.
But that doesn't excuse the fact that in a hero story about female empowerment, a white, blond, blue-eyed, pretty girl, with a lot of money - Harmony - appears to constantly get away with murder in the series. (snip) They never staked her - or punished her. Sure you can say the same thing about Angel and Spike - but we actually see both suffer (snip) But Harmony - considered a joke - well - the worst thing that appears to happen to her is Spike slaps her around a bit and breaks up with her?? (Which brings up a separate problem - the male vampires are able to seek redemption or be redeemed or live to seek it, while the female, not so much.
*Let us note, for a moment, the parallels between Harmony/Spike and Spike/Buffy for a moment. (and Harmony/Cordettes, Spike/Fanged Four) Soulless Spike's suffering relative to the suffering he caused is probably in proportion to Harmony's suffering, though in total I suspect Spike was actually the beneficiary of far more privilege than Harmony over his career.
But back to it - These are not seperate problems. They are one in the same. We do not see Harmony punished because we're not going to see her get Redemption. (She's a bimbo. She's not going to get redemption. Bimbos don't get redemption. Buffy and Cordy are special - they didn't grow out of bimbos - they we're never really bimbos all along and now they get to show us all.)
We don't want to see Harmony go after redemption. We want to keep her in the Paris Hilton box, where we can safely look down upon her as a bimbo and not expend any effort upon her. It allows us to hate the pretty privileged white girl and feel like special members of the elite club who are worthy of that investment. We can go back to that point on BtVS when Cordelia became a member of the circle and started moving toward heroism, and she became someone Willow couldn't hate anymore. But Harmony was safe to hate. And maybe Harmony is hate-able, but needing to have someone to hate isn't a sign of actualization...
We look at Spike. He's the one who said "I'm a soulless monster, but I can be a man" - were we allowing for that because we generally believed in the principle or just because he's special and we're indulging? If we generally believe in the principle, then we have to actually go beyond just doing it for Spike. Anybody can do favors for the people they actually like - commitment is extending that chance to someone they don't have a personal stake in. And within the context of BtVS/AtS, Harmony is the only case study we have.
And my general experience with fandom and the show has been that, whatever people said they believed about Redemption when the issue was Spike, they didn't believe in it when it came to Harmony.
Extending the privilege to people we aren't already predisposed to help is very, very hard. But it's sometimes the difference between a moral stance and an indulgence. That's one of the major problems "Disharmony" raised, particularly for people who saw themselves as Redemptionistas.
On the one hand, if we didn't know her, if she wasn't a part of the stock characters for the writers to re-use - Harmony wouldn't be allowed to live. On the other hand, if we liked her, if we let ourselves know her as a person (let alone part of the inner circle/inteligentsia) would we allow her to grow up and seek redemption.