Who's That Girl?

Top 2. Jun 18, 2002 12:42 PM

» ravenfairie - Re: A clarification

I agree with your comments and enjoyed your article. Yesterday Space Network aired the first Buffy episode and it was remarkalbe to see all the characters so young, and rather annoying. It's great to watch a TV programme where the characters grow and change almost as naturally as 'real' people.

Well done article!

Anne
Contributing Editor, Shamanic healing, here at the suite!

-- posted by ravenfairie

Top 3. Jun 18, 2002 3:14 PM

» Peggin - Great article

I agree that Buffy made great leaps towards growing up after the end of "Dead Things". I think a good deal of Buffy's behavior between "Smashed" and "Dead Things" was brought on to a large extent by severe depression over the fact that yet another person she loved and trusted up and left her. I really think Buffy would never have fallen apart so completely if Giles hadn't left her. And Spike's assertions that she was "wrong" gave her a kind of "permission" to act that way. Much the same way Spike has often tried to excuse his bad behavior by reminding people that he is a vampire, Buffy allowed herself to believe that, if she was "wrong", then it wasn't really her doing these things.

Once she was forced to face the fact that there was nothing wrong with her, that she was just "different", she seemed to change her attitude a great deal. She still had a lot of depression to deal with, but after "Dead Things", she seemed to be trying to actually deal with it.

-- posted by Peggin

Top 4. Jun 19, 2002 9:00 AM

» adultfan - A great article

I want to say what I great article this was, althought "The Body" is part of season 5 and came after Riley was already gone. Lately I've seen nothing but negativity toward this show, so it is good to see a change. I've seen a lot of homosexual groups bashing Joss Whedon for killing Tara. I'd like to say that their comments that this is back to the "celluloid closet" does a disservice to both the lovely characters of Willow and Tara. At the end of season five Willow used dark magic to save Tara. It makes sense she would return to what worked before. Tara was easily the sweetest character in BTVS. To say that she was killed because she was gay is stupid. The fact that she was such a lovely person made her death painful to all viewers. She won't be remember as "that gay girl" but rather as the angel who was stolen from the group. When people think back to the fact that she was gay, I think that will change people's perceptions of lesbians in incredible ways. And Willow should be angry at losing her. Don't forget Dawn was destroyed by her death too. The repercussions of her death will likely be felt in early episodes next season. Again, thanks for the great article

-- posted by adultfan

Top 5. Jun 19, 2002 10:20 AM

» Jaynee - Re: A great article

In response to message posted by adultfan:

Typos are the worst! Season FOUR should have read FIVE when I mentioned "The Body". It's amazing how many times you can re-read something and still miss it until someone points it out. Thanks, adultfan!

I agree that the effect of Tara's death won't really be felt until next year because in the final two episodes of Season Six the Scoobies were spending all their time trying to stop Willow, and never had a chance to deal with the grief. It'll be a bittersweet way to begin the season, but I'm content knowing Tara will be fondly remembered by millions of fans.

-- posted by Jaynee

Top 6. Jun 19, 2002 1:12 PM

» Peggin - Re: A great article

In response to message posted by adultfan:

I've seen some of those comments that killing off Tara makes Joss a homophobe. I find the idea that Joss *couldn't* kill Tara because she was gay to be just as narrow minded as the idea that he *only* killed her because she was gay. He killed Tara because that was the person Willow was in love with, and he needed something like that to happen to make Willow go off the deep end.

There's something I noticed over the course of this season, and once I saw it, I was kind of surprised that I never saw it before. See, although Willow and Tara are the characters on the show that are actually homosexual, I think it is really *Buffy*'s story that is about the experiences many people go through when they first start to realize that they are homosexual.

When Buffy first told her mother about being a Slayer, the scene way played very much like a "coming out" scene, right down to Joyce asking Buffy if she was sure she was the Slayer, and had she tried not being the Slayer. There was also at least one other time when Joyce made a comment about trying to march in the "Slayer Pride Parade".

Ever since the series began, Buffy has struggled against being a Slayer. She has commented more times than I can count that she wishes she could just be "normal."

The people in her life she has been most attracted to physically (leaving Riley aside for a moment) have been Angel, Spike, and IMO Dracula. (When she was with Parker, she told Willow that it was "nice" -- which I think falls somewhere in the area of damning someone with faint praise.)

Now, I'm not saying there was nothing there with Riley. I don't think she was ever as sexually attracted to him as she was to any of the three vampires, but that doesn't mean the relationship was completely empty or a sham. Many homosexuals live heterosexual lifestyles for years, even get married and have kids, before they realize that they are gay. Willow had a very happy, and I think passionate, relationship with Oz before she fell in love with Tara and discovered that she found that relationship more fulfilling.

I do think Buffy tried to make things work with Riley, but there was always something missing. Right from the start, he didn't completely satisfy her. Before she started dating Riley, Buffy told Willow that she felt like love and passion had to go hand in hand with pain and fighting (which could be taken as a way of saying that she has different sexual appetites than most other people), but she thought there was something wrong with herself for having that attitude.

I think the scene in "The I in Team" intercutting between Buffy and Riley fighting the demon and the two of them having sex illustrated rather graphically that, for Buffy, it was true. She needed something different from "ordinary" girls; she needed the fighting along with the passion. I think the point was illustrated again in the beginning of "Buffy vs. Dracula", when Buffy had to get out of bed with Riley to go hunt down a vampire before she was satisfied. Also, when Buffy was sparring with Riley in "A New Man", she had to "hold back", which I think was supposed to be as much about sexuality as it was about fighting.

By making it a metaphor, the writers could explore things they would never be able to explore with regards to, say, Willow and Tara's relationship.

Buffy could call her unconventional sexual preferences (and I would say that it's "unconventional" to enjoy tearing the entire room apart in the process of having sex) "perverse and degrading" without having the PC police call for the writers' heads.

Buffy could tell herself that, no matter how good it felt, it was "wrong" for her to feel this way.

Buffy could say that she was disgusted with herself for having these feelings, and she wanted them to stop.

They could show someone like Xander questioning the morality of the relationship and still remain a sympathetic character.

They could show Buffy fighting her "inappropriate" feelings by showing her actually *fighting* the person who was the object of those feelings. (Which, at least on one level, is what I think the fights in "Smashed" and "Dead Things" were about.)

I think after "Dead Things", Buffy did start to come to terms with her attraction to Spike. She wasn't ready to "come out" (the exact phrase used on the show), but I don't see that as any worse than Willow's unwillingness to "come out" when she first realized she was falling in love with Tara. There was, however, a definite difference in the way Buffy treated Spike from the time she broke down in front of Tara at the end of DT to the time she found out about Spike harboring the demon eggs in AYW.

In OaFA, when Spike acted like an ass, joking about eating Richard, Buffy took him aside and told him to knock it off rather than just beating him up or reaming him out in front of a roomful of people. Of course, then they started having a fight, but it was a fight with words like normal people would have. No comments about him being evil or a thing, no comments about how I never want to be with you again. Just an argument.

When Spike came to Buffy in the beginning of AYW, the only real objection she gave to being with him was that Dawn was counting on her to come home. (Plus, there was a comment Spike made that if he couldn't come inside, maybe Buffy should "come outside", which I think was supposed to be another "coming out" reference.) When she went to him later in his crypt, the way she acted with him was almost romantic (almost, but not quite -- I don't think she was quite ready yet to admit to herself that she loved him). I think that if Riley hadn't come in, and if Spike hadn't been harboring those eggs, Buffy would have eventually let herself fall in love with him. It was finding out that he had those eggs that made her decide that she could never trust him enough to allow herself to fall in love with him.

(There's even a corollary between the way Buffy acted when she found out about Willow and Tara and the way Willow acted when she found out about Buffy and Spike. Each of them had a "momentary wiggins" when they found out that the other was involved in an "unconventional relationship".)

Tara's family had told her that she had some "demon" inside her. They had convinced her that it was true. I took this as being a metaphor for the way some people respond to homosexuals. There's something wrong with her, she's evil, she's got some demon in her. Only we found out it was a lie. Tara wasn't a demon. She was a normal human girl (with magical powers) who happened to be attracted to women rather than men.

I think that's the same thing that's going on with Buffy. "Society" (meaning mainly her circle of friends and the Watchers Council) has led her to believe that there is something wrong with her for being attracted to vampires. I think in the end we'll find out that it's not true. There's nothing "wrong" with her. Once Buffy comes to terms with her unconventional sexual orientation, she'll realize that she's just a normal human girl (with superpowers) who happens to be more attracted to vampires than she is to human men.

Of course, there's more than one level to the metaphor, which is where the whole soul thing comes into play. She can't just be with just any vampire, because most of them spend a good portion of their time going around killing people. I think the only real option for Buffy is a vampire who has a soul and who won't lose it the minute he gets a little too happy.

-- posted by Peggin

Top 7. Jul 1, 2002 12:34 PM

» GuitarZac - Buffy the Vampire F**ker

In response to message posted by Peggin:

Yes Peggin, you certainly convinced me - not that I need much convincing.

One more bit of evidence, in "Pangs" the Thanksgiving episode of season 4, she expressed her hesitation to Giles about battling Hus, the Chumash spirit, given her symapathy for his cause. She said "I like my evil like I like my men...evil."

Now that you have convinced the readers here that Buffy is almost exclusively turned on by vampires and our minds have been expanded, maybe we are ready to hear the truth about her and Faith being the same person.

- Zac

-- posted by GuitarZac

Top 8. Apr 25, 2003 9:49 AM

» Horrorcom - I think it was a horrible ARTICLE that......

In response to message posted by Peggin:

Ithink the article wasn't all that great for it did not reveal that much information about the true character.Yeh, she went through alot but it doesn't define the true her. I think that giving more information about her experiences and how she handled them would have been more valueable.

-- posted by Horrorcom