But somehow now days TV viewers resent it if they aren't protected, as you say: they can get very angry if a favorite character dies (as though in life we get to pick and chose who lives or dies).
I remember back in the day debating S6 BTVS with a fan and I asked why they are watching. They stated they wanted to be entertained. They wanted a nice comfy tv show, where the bad guys were well-defined, and the good guys were too...that there was humor, and no one they liked died. They wanted the Buffy of S1-3, where their favorite characters survived the day.
It was hard for them to wrap their heads around the other point of view. And I gave up.
There's also to a degree...an over-identification with a character, when a fan falls in love - to the point they can't quite see straight. The character either reminds them of a loved one, a part of themselves, or ...it's just something they can't even explain. When the writer kills that character - to the fan - it's like losing a loved one, a best friend. They are as devastated by that character's death as they would have been if their loved one or pet died.
It's never really happened for me. I suppose you could say I felt that way about Spike, but I didn't cry when he died - I was unmoved (mainly because I knew at that point he was coming back) and I did not cry when they died or were about to in NFA.
So it's something I don't really understand. For me, the characters remain fictional - they never quite enter my life in that way. But I've also read and watched a lot of dreary/realistic fiction - with a lot of death and from an early age. Plus experienced death at an early age.
When I read 'Little Women' as a child, and Beth died, it was a shock to me. In most stories I read no one died. But of course in the world that Louisa May Alcott grew up in there were a lot of deaths (her little sister really did die, and she served as a nurse during the Civil War, seeing a great many young men die). I'm sure Alcott wrote about her sister's death because it was true, and because people weren't trying to protect young readers from having sad things happen.
My first fictional death? Was I think Dumbo's Mom in the Disney film when I was 5, which was followed by the real life and somewhat gruesome death of an acquaintance/boy-friend (todd simcox - I can still remember his name), who I'd known since nursery school - he got hit by a bus in the first grade. Then of course my Grandmother's cat, Claymount, who I was upset about because I found his body. She told me somewhat unsympathetically - things die, deal with it, then launched into a detailed description of her own mother's death when she was 10. My Uncle Jim's death followed that about four-or-five years later.
I think the real life experience of death enabled me to put fictional character death into perspective. After all, I didn't really lose the fictional character. I could re-read. The book is over. But the real person or animal is forever gone and all I have is memories that fade. The book or tv show doesn't. In a way fictional character deaths are easier - you have their voices, their stories forever embedded on pages or on film...but you loved one (unless you videotaped or filmed them and I never did) not so much.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-03-24 02:03 pm (UTC)I remember back in the day debating S6 BTVS with a fan and I asked why they are watching. They stated they wanted to be entertained. They wanted a nice comfy tv show, where the bad guys were well-defined, and the good guys were too...that there was humor, and no one they liked died. They wanted the Buffy of S1-3, where their favorite characters survived the day.
It was hard for them to wrap their heads around the other point of view. And I gave up.
There's also to a degree...an over-identification with a character, when a fan falls in love - to the point they can't quite see straight.
The character either reminds them of a loved one, a part of themselves,
or ...it's just something they can't even explain. When the writer kills that character - to the fan - it's like losing a loved one, a best friend. They are as devastated by that character's death as they would have been if their loved one or pet died.
It's never really happened for me. I suppose you could say I felt that way about Spike, but I didn't cry when he died - I was unmoved (mainly because I knew at that point he was coming back) and I did not cry when
they died or were about to in NFA.
So it's something I don't really understand. For me, the characters remain fictional - they never quite enter my life in that way. But I've also read and watched a lot of dreary/realistic fiction - with a lot of death and from an early age. Plus experienced death at an early age.
When I read 'Little Women' as a child, and Beth died, it was a shock to me. In most stories I read no one died. But of course in the world that Louisa May Alcott grew up in there were a lot of deaths (her little sister really did die, and she served as a nurse during the Civil War, seeing a great many young men die). I'm sure Alcott wrote about her sister's death because it was true, and because people weren't trying to protect young readers from having sad things happen.
My first fictional death? Was I think Dumbo's Mom in the Disney film when I was 5, which was followed by the real life and somewhat gruesome death of an acquaintance/boy-friend (todd simcox - I can still remember his name), who I'd known since nursery school - he got hit by a bus in the first grade. Then of course my Grandmother's cat, Claymount, who I was upset about because I found his body. She told me somewhat unsympathetically - things die, deal with it, then launched into a detailed description of her own mother's death when she was 10. My Uncle Jim's death followed that about four-or-five years later.
I think the real life experience of death enabled me to put fictional character death into perspective. After all, I didn't really lose the fictional character. I could re-read. The book is over. But the real person or animal is forever gone and all I have is memories that fade.
The book or tv show doesn't. In a way fictional character deaths are easier - you have their voices, their stories forever embedded on pages or on film...but you loved one (unless you videotaped or filmed them and I never did) not so much.