shadowkat | (no subject)

Aw..nobody responded to my movie trailer post. (pouts) Not that I really expected anyone too. But...one squee over the Spiderman Trailer would have been fun. Apparently I'm the only one who thinks the Avengers trailer is lame?

Work has put me in a pissy mood. For lack of a better term. I am tempted to hibernate tomorrow and not deal with people. I had a headache by the end of the day...from email. Sigh. Project Managers and Engineers. Sigh. Actually - the men at work drove me nuts. Patronizing bastards. Who were completely clueless. One guy insisted on talking to another guy, and refused to listen to me, because I was female. I told him I was managing the project and had only pulled the other guy in for a bit of help. He was "assisting" me NOT the other way around. I know, shocking, but there it is.

After much thought and analysis, I've decided that Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Television series, in spite of Whedon or because of him (on the fence) was feminist. It unlike all his other stories did not fall into the victimized little girl trope popularized by Luc Besson and later by Stieg Larrson. I'm sorry, the victimized little girl trope is not what I'd consider feminist. How is showing a girl repeatedly at the mercy of men, until she finally gets fed up and kicks them in the balls feminist? It feels more like male guilt or a way of handling that guilt (much like the magical black man helped and aided by the nice white couple in The Blind Side is about white liberal guilt not the black experience and is insidiously racist), and in a way - female revenge fantasy, which is okay, I guess, but not what I'd define as feminist or even misogynist for that matter. Just female revenge fantasy.

What I liked about Buffy the TV Series is two things: 1) Buffy was not and never was a victim. She wasn't raped. She didn't let it happen. 2) She took the reins. She was a hero like guys are heroes. She didn't have to become a victim first. She was like Peter Parker in Spiderman.

My main problem with the victimized little girl trope is the girl can only become physically powerful and a hero after she is raped and tortured by men, not before. She can't be a hero just because she is - like men can. Buffy prior to the episode "Get it Done" was not about the victimized little girl. And in many ways subverted the stereotype portraying traditional male roles throughout much of the series (with the possible exception of the first two seasons). That is however the only thing that I've seen or read that Whedon has written that I can say that about. I don't know why or when he decided women can only be powerful after they've been brutally tortured by men or at the mercy of men. Nor do I know why everything else he created is scarily and disappointingly sexist in places, not completely, just in places. I suspect somewhere along the line Whedon fell into the same fantasy as Luc Besson and Stieg Larrson? Where he assauges his own guilt by creating a fantastical heroine who kills her rapist over and over again. She does what he'd do if he were female - as a friend of mine neatly put it. Forgetting the power women have which is uniquely our own. We don't have to kill the rapist to survive. We can forget he exists. Excise him from our memory. Or in some cases transform the experience into one that is not painful and lacks power. There are ways to handle things that do not require fists or guns. We can rise above. Our lives are not about our gender. Most of the time, we don't think about being women. We are just ourselves.

Sorry I keep editing this. I think one of the things I love most about lj and the internet social mediums...particularly the fanboards, is you can't always tell who is male or female, black or white, rich or poor, old or young, queer or straight...these things fall away. What we see is the essence of the individual, not the constructs or short-hand categories that we use to define one another. Race, gender, class, all of these things...fall away. You can fall in love with a person, not what they look like, not their physical essence. We live in such a material world, so physical, the internet..often strips that physical materiality away...and we are left with each others words and our perceptions of them. I love that. I can be male on the internet (people on a fanboard actually thought I was for a bit) and I can be black, I can be
short, I can be young, I can be ancient. I can be whatever I want. Rich, poor. It's freeing. Until people find out...and then that's lost.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Joss had lots of involvement in seasons 6-7. Many of the 'controversial' plot points that the fandom was harping on were his ideas, he signed up for the rest of it, he rewrote some scenes and when he didn't have the time to write the dialogue, he gave the writer notes to follow them (the latter is what StevenDeKnight says he did for Dead Things). Everything points out he was doing exactly what he wanted. He always had more a lot more clout than anyone else in the show, including Noxon as the nominal showrunner.

I said he had less involvement. And he did.

I didn't say he had no clout, I said he wasn't the only one *with* clout. And he wasn't.

Well yes and no...boot_the_grime is actually correct on this. The controversial plot points in S6 and S7 were either pitched or permitted by Whedon, as Whedon stated himself in various interviews. Noxon and Fury had some power, true, but Whedon did change things. He notably reviewed and changed the beating scene in Dead Things (made Spike's face less battered)
and he suggested the balcony sex in Dead Things and the invisible sex in Gone, per both Marti Noxon's commentary/interviews and Stephen De Knight's. Seeing Red? Whedon signed off on.

(I didn't have issues with S6-7, I actually like those seasons.)

I never said he had no control. I said he was involved less. To clarify, in prior seasons there would have been no need to review the beating scene because he would have been there. Gellar herself commented on his absence. She went to him about the Dead Things balcony scene because she didn't understand it and, rumor has it, might have complained to someone over it. But he talked her into it by explained the character was lost. A more notable instance perhaps is the Beneath You rewrite that she took to him to get changed.

I'm not talking about network restrictions, but the ability of actors (and to a lesser extent, directors) to have influence. Gellar's contact only allowed a certain amount of hours, for instance, leading to the Gone plot. There would be no firing a la Charisma Carpenter.

UPN was less hands on than the WB according to various interviews. Marsters notably stated or summarized - the switch from WB to UPN was a bit like no longer having the parents in the room. UPN had not standards and practices moderator or even rules - since they were showing Jamie Fox reruns, Wrestling, and Voyager. Mostly their own content. Then they acquired Buffy, and gave Whedon carte blanche. So things the WB would not permit - for example body piercings, popped up in the first episode that aired on UPN. Smashed? No way that would have aired on WB. Dead Things? Forget about it. Seeing Red? Not in this lifetime. WB was pretty stringent. They notoriously axed an episode David Fury wrote for Angel in season 1 Angel - made Mutant Enemy rewrite it.

Exactly. The Willow/Tara sex, for instance, was something that couldn't have aired on WB - they made a big fuss even over a female/female kiss in The Body. I believe DeKnight when he says that the balcony scene in Dead Things was something Whedon wanted to do for a long time. Dark Willow was also planned years in advance, I believe.