(no subject)

[shadowkat]

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.

Comments

[rogin]

yes, your two points also show quite well, why the series was feminist the comics are not. There she is just pushed around and two out of three times the sex she has is dubcon at best.

And while I do agree with you that the feminism in the larson books is not perfect at all, the comics stoop even lower than that by not even acknowledging rape is happening when one person is bereft of their agency.

I wonder sometimes how someone who has seen Veronica Mars can handle the issue so badly.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Sorry, i don't watch movies.... ;-)

As to what you write about the "victimized girl trope", guilt, sexism and feminism:

Thank you for writing that, i feel very much the same (and i actually know what i'm talking about when talking about "male guilt"). I read what you wrote on stormwreath's journal - and that's what i wanted to express myself.

Revenge fantasy, or just plain fucked up world and fucked up people - yeah, tell this story, why not. But that isn't feminist in my book. I think it is a dire problem, people declaring one thing, and doing/writing another (as can be seen a lot in politics...).

So - thanks again for expressing this so eloquently.

[gingerwall.livejournal.com]

Basically the same thing as Norwie, except I am not so eloquent.

I didn't read the Dragon Tattoo book, but saw the movie and was especially disturbed by the fact that she was willing to repeatedly go into situations expecting (non-intercourse) rape. That definitely does not count as "feminist" and mostly negates whatever powerful message the whole rape-revenge storyline had going for it.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder if the reason Buffy was different from his other works is because it was originally based on a sexist trope rather than a more formal idea. It was originally a "not" something as opposed to Dollhouse or Angel or Firefly. Not feminist in its origins necessarily. Sure, Joss says that was his original goal, but given more recent comments by him and his new team, I really wonder if it wasn't his habit of taking credit for accidents after-the-fact. Buffy is arguably the creation whose genesis he had least control over.

It would explain some of the resentment for it and the character he's been showing as of late.

Where he assauges his own guilt by creating a fantastical heroine who kills her rapist over and over again.

I've come to think it's more of a kink, really.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, we don't think about being women. We are just ourselves.

I think that's the big problem with for a lot of mainstream creators, they just can't the idea that gender or race or sexual orientation isn't front and centre in the minds of people who fall outside of their own white male default setting. Thus we end up with "edgy" jokes about race or endless movies with women "owning their sexuality" by dressing in fetish wear and manipulating men. Funny, the women I've known who were the most comfortable with sex didn't give a shit about how they looked and were incredibly straightforward about their expectations.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Agreed re: the victim angle. I've occasionally heard people say that there's no real difference between the standard Last Girls of every slasher movie ever and Buffy; those women also go toe-to-toe with the monster and beat him (until 2 minutes into the sequel, at least, when it's revealed that he was Not Quite Dead). Which is a good point, since that's what Buffy was based on, but the difference is: they're still very much victims, even if they survive (and not always unscarred, either). Their story is entirely dependent on the monster, and they have no agency of their own - they only exist to be victimized by him. Horror movie fans remember the names Laurie Strode or Nancy Thompson; everyone remembers Michael Myers and Freddie Krueger. Buffy, on the other hand, isn't the victim of her monsters; she's the one who seeks them out and kills them. She walks willingly into the Master's lair, knowing what she'll meet, and when he kills her, she's the one who comes back at the last second. It's her story.

Victims or social conditions?

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I have a slightly different take, in part anyway. Maybe it's because I'm a few years older, but I see some of the "coming back from victimization" stories as a metaphor for the social condition of women until very recently. It's hard to start from somewhere other than that and explain why feminism, per se, is so important. Kind of like why Frederick Douglass titled his autobiography "Up From Slavery".

That's not to say that every single instance of female victimization fits this more limited trope; most are just the sort of fantasy you describe. But I think some of them do, and in particular I think Get it Done does.