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A Theory about demons who can have a soul/spirit? -- slayer, 09:02:35 04/20/04 Tue

I think all demons that are more tainted with human genes possess a soul. For example Doyle was only half-demon just like Cordy became in Season 3. Groo and Connor were also halfbreeds, also when Connor was getting his soul drained by the souleater. Even Anya possessed a soul even as a vengeance demon. Vampire are the only demon that are so far considered completely souless. A soul is really nothing more than a conscience. Another point is that maybe good demons have souls while evil one's don't.

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[> Re: A Theory about demons who can have a soul/spirit? -- luvthistle1, 11:10:32 04/20/04 Tue

..... your Theory would explain why Clem seem so nice, we never did find out if he had a soul or not and the same can be said for Lorne.

[> [> I wish Clem would guest star on Angel before it finished.... -- angel's nibblet, 03:27:28 04/21/04 Wed

....that would make my millenium!

*considers starting a "Bring Back Clem" Campaign"

Anyone else want to join the BBCC effort?

Amy Acker's credits for 'Underneath' (spoilers, AtS 5.17, obviously) -- Pip, 13:16:14 04/20/04 Tue

Something I just noticed when re-watching tonight.

Amy Acker's credits are not the normal three shot. There's the one shot of her as Fred. This is apparently followed by two shots of her as Illyria, making up the normal Angel 3-shot credits.

However, nestling in between the two 'Illyria' shots is a very brief, almost subliminal shot of AA as Fred, in lab-coat and glasses. Fred inside Illyria.

Significant with a capital sig?

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[> Also... -- Ray, 13:35:37 04/20/04 Tue

Gunn's shots show him fighting, and no more smug lawyer shot.
And Harmony is now in the credits.

Hole in the World -- Celebaelin, 14:14:43 04/20/04 Tue

Just seen this ep. for the first time and felt the need to say how good I thought it was. The LOLs alone made it far better than any of the comedies I've been watching recently which generally tend to provoke a less uproarious response from me. The dramatic content was, er, dramatic, Fred being probably the most sympathetic of the lead characters. Could you reasonably expect a TV series to be more entertaining? I think not.

Cavemen or astronauts? Remains to be seen.

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[> Re: Hole in the World (spoilers) -- Kitkat, 01:40:01 04/21/04 Wed

I saw it last night on Sky and, wow. For me the best episode of this series so far. Started off too light hearted and happy so you just knew something bad was going to start to happen, especially as the romantic in me was doing happy Wes&Fred (Fes??) dances. A Joss written & directed episode is always going to end badly if it starts with romance. Then became incredibly tense, with some jaw dropping moments of character development (Lorne threatening Eve, Wes shooting the flunkey, Gunns' violent attack on Knox).

What do they have against the female characters on Angel anyway? Not that there were many to begin with but they seem to either fall by the wayside (Kate)or get overwhelmed by evil (Cordy, Fred).

And does Wes have possibly the worst luck ever when it comes to women?

On a side note, I began this series of Angel as usual, ie visiting the board daily, reading episode guides and synopses and generally being very spoiled. Then Sky caught up with the WB during the Xmas break and I decided to go in clean. And it has made watching the episodes 100x better watching them fresh and unspoiled. Last night was unbearably tense racing towards the end not knowng what it was. Although it has meant that this is the first time I have visited the board all year :-( I find you can't come here and not trip over some spoilers.

Kitkat

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Twelfth Night -- Celebaelin, 19:35:08 04/20/04 Tue

I've been having a quick look around without getting too spoiled and I don't think anybody has mentioned this so far so "Illyria" is most famously mentioned by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, bearing in mind Joss' admiration for the bard of Avon I doubt that this is a co-incidence.

Esentially it's Albania and Bosnia, but if you want to read the full entry it's here

For those interested in such things the Hallstatt culture is a Celtic style which pre-dates the La Tene, if it's prior to 400BC, it's Hallstatt.

SCENE II. The sea-coast.

Enter VIOLA, a Captain, and Sailors

VIOLA: What country, friends, is this?

Captain: This is Illyria, lady.

VIOLA: And what should I do in Illyria?
My brother he is in Elysium.
Perchance he is not drown'd: what think you, sailors?

Captain: It is perchance that you yourself were saved.

VIOLA: O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.

Captain: True, madam: and, to comfort you with chance,
Assure yourself, after our ship did split,
When you and those poor number saved with you
Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,
Most provident in peril, bind himself,
Courage and hope both teaching him the practise,
To a strong mast that lived upon the sea;
Where, like Arion on the dolphin's back,
I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves
So long as I could see.

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[> Re: Twelfth Night -- Pip, 00:29:55 04/21/04 Wed

I don't think anybody has mentioned this so far

I did! I posted on Illyria in Twelfth Night way back when Hole in the World came out. So by now the post has drifted off into the archives (9, atm), and is currently hanging out at
http://www.voy.com/14567/9/5560.html

[> The Shakesperian thread (TCH's) also addresses it -- Rahael, 00:37:10 04/21/04 Wed

but that thread has a spoiler for the preview for next weeks.

[> Re: Twelfth Night -- Celebaelin, 05:31:28 04/21/04 Wed

I should have known this would have been commented on. Thanks for pointing me at archive 9 Pip. Now the episode has aired I can read it with impunity.

As Kitkat suggests in her reply to my initial post, being completely unspoiled really does heighten the enjoyment I get from watching. I also get a quirky sense of satisfaction that nearly everything I mentioned had been addressed almost verbatim by another poster.

Racism again, but different: -- mrsubjunctive, 20:37:53 04/20/04 Tue

Now that everybody's completely sick of the whole racism topic, I'd like to add my two cents. (It's my way.)

I've been watching "Rose's" thread develop and grow for a while, and I think it's been missing something throughout, largely because Rose, or whoever, framed the initial post in a way that was guaranteed to get everyone all riled up and defensive. But.

My thesis here is that the question of whether or not the Jossverse or its fans are somehow implicitly racist is a valid one to ask and think about, even if one is inclined to answer in the negative. (Which, by and large, I am.)

Full disclosure: I am white, male, gay, and thirty years old. I live in a U.S. state with very few non-whites, but lived for a period in an area where a good 90% (possibly more) of the population was non-white. Just so we all know where I'm coming from.

Here we go, then:

Rose's initial challenge was, to put it charitably, inept. One does not go around accusing people of being racist these days, not in the U.S. It's bad form. And I think s/he was dreadfully wrong besides. What I've seen on this board so far is mainly a group of people who are thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent, and not easily riled (except maybe at certain networks, but that's for good reason). But there is, somewhere in his/r initial post, an actual challenge. This being, simply, the observation that vanishingly few of the main characters in any of Joss Whedon's shows are non-white.

Which there's been a tendency for people to notice this and then apologize for it. I've seen a number of Buffy scholarship-type papers on line that go through various contortions to try to prove that racial issues are in fact addressed on BtVS. Usually, this is by claiming that the vampires stand in for some racial group (Black and Jewish, in the examples I can recall specifically), and then developing a full-blown theory about what this says. Folks, this is hooey. If Whedon wanted to talk about racial issues, he's got two shows set in California, a state which last time I knew was hardly all-white, in which to do this.

So, question number one for the group: should be assume, then, that Whedon has nothing much to say about race? And if so, is this malign, benign, neglectful, or something else?

There is a noticeable change in the ethnic composition of the characters of the shows as time goes on. "Buffy" has very few Black characters, and unless I'm forgetting someone really important, no other minority characters at all. I'm sure I'm leaving out someone, but plot-driving Black characters, characters the audience is supposed to identify with and care about (one way or the other) are basically only Trick, from season 3, and Wood, from Season 7. Technically there's also the First Slayer (S4, 5, 6?, 7?), and Nikki, but neither of them seem very known or knowable. Among other problems, they're both dead when we first meet them. Rona, yes, is technically Black, and she's a living, named character, but we know next to nothing about her except that she's got a smart mouth. And Kennedy may technically have been Hispanic, though probably not with a name like "Kennedy."

Question number two: in the few cases where there are Black characters in "Buffy," their ethnicity is never commented on, it never drives the plot, it never adds to any tension, repulsion, or attraction between characters. Is this realistic? Desirable? Other?

Whedon talks, A LOT, about how when he was developing "Buffy" initially, he was deliberately crafting a series that people could really love, where they could relate to the characters and watch them struggle with problems and etc. By and large, he would seem to have succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. But suppose you're black. I find it doubtful that Joss set out with the deliberate intent of alienating non-white viewers, and yet it took three seasons and a new series before his shows had a sympathetic Black character.

So question three: is it meaningful, in this context, that there are few to no non-white characters in "Buffy?" If you're inclined to give a knee-jerk answer of "no," ask yourself, as honestly as you can, whether you'd have been as apt to watch "Buffy" if all the cutesy words and turns of phrase were replaced by variations on Black slang, if you were flipping through the channels and saw an all-black cast. If Spike were throwing around Hispanic slang (vato, cholo) instead of British. Wouldn't you, maybe, have a difficult time relating? Even if the story lines were the same, even if everyone were equivelently attractive, etc.? And if you would have a tough time relating to the alternate "Buffy" I've described here, then how do you suppose Whedon expected non-whites to relate to and love his show?

Pause to note that successive series have been more inclusive. "Angel" has a smaller core cast than "Buffy" did by its end, but there is at least Gunn. Who may be sinister and insecure and strange and stereotypical at times, but he's a genuinely fleshed-out character, with a history, and motivations, and so forth. And "Firefly" had Book and Zoe, and Early, besides seeming to be more or less post-racial in the first place.

The other part of Rose's criticism, that questioning characters' judgment and actions is never simply about questioning their judgment and actions, that there must be an underlying racist motive somewhere, is pretty patently ridiculous and has been exposed as such already, time and again, with varying degrees of playfulness. I think that one of the big draws of Whedon's shows, for those people who are drawn to them, anyway, is that like us, his characters do stupid things from time to time. They get cranky. Moody. They act in fits of rage or passion or desperation or insecurity and then pay the prices for their actions, irrespective of race, creed, gender, or sexual orientation. Just like we, the viewers, do from time to time (though our actions typically don't summon song-and-dance demons or start apocalypses or get people inadvertently killed: like most television, it's life, but more so.). And so it's not out of line to be critical when they're stupid, but it's not motivated by race.

In fact, since even the minority characters are for all intents and purposes white and middle-class (by ideology, aspiration, assumptions, etc.), I'd almost go so far as to say that I think criticism of the characters could well be about anything BUT race.

And one of the great things about characters who are sometimes stupid and ridiculous is that one can learn vicariously, sometimes, by watching them. One can say, for example, hey, I don't HAVE to leave my bride/groom at the altar, even if I'm nervous about getting married and having vivid daymares about how it can all go horribly wrong. Or whatever. And the shows have, collectively, covered a lot of the human universal things: death, loss, love, addiction (if ineptly), depression, money, power, heroism, and so on and so forth.

In some ways, to tip my hand a bit, I think it's admirable that the society Whedon tends to portray is more or less post-racial, where one can, as Gunn does pretty explicitly in "That Old Gang of Mine," reject racial and socioeconomic (this is at least implied) ties and ally himself with a group for ethical reasons. I think it's cool that generally morality trumps everything in the Jossverse.

But I also have to live in the realverse, where dealing with people of different ethnicity and culture is going to happen from time to time. And where, at least in the U.S., being non-white, statistically speaking, means you're more likely to be harassed by police, more likely to go to jail, less likely to get medical care, more likely to be poor, less likely to go to college, and all manner of other things. The Black (or Hispanic, or Asian, or Native American, or Jewish, or Arabic) experience in the U.S. is demonstrably unlike that for Caucasians. How should I respond to this? Whedon doesn't say.

And so it strikes me as a notable lack of emotional realism that Gunn, once he makes this decision in TOGoM, is pretty much never seen in the company of another Black person again. It seems odd that Buffy can go to college and barely even see, much less befriend, anyone who's not white. In some senses, race, by the fact that it's omitted from consideration virtually across the board, is a bigger obstacle to relationships than being a werewolf (Oz), witch (Willow), vampire (Angel, Spike), military goon (Riley), ex-demon (Anya), normal human ex-evil (Andrew, Faith), rapist (Spike again), ex-boyfriend (Angel again), from another country (Giles, Spike), gay (Willow, Tara, Andrew) or anything else anybody wants to throw out there. She did, yes, go on a date with Wood. But I could have cut the sexual tension with the fingernail on my pinkie. Nor did I much believe it when it was Wood and Faith, instead.

And this is odd upon odd for a series, actually a group of series, that has been, often, about addressing difficult and complex issues without sugarcoating or being didactic. I can't even really come up with any good examples off the top of my head where race is even addressed metaphorically, the efforts of Buffy scholarship notwithstanding.

I'm not saying that I'd want ME to throw in a Black character just for the sake of having one. [cough cough SMALLVILLE cough] I'm not saying that the characters don't already have plenty going on, most of the time, without having to worry about race besides. I'm not saying race is the only important realverse subject Joss's shows ignore in this way (there's also religion, just off the top of my head: six and a half seasons of Willow being Jewish, but not in a way that affects her decisions, morality, or worldview, plus plenty of Wicca-as-lesbian-sex-metaphor, and then we get Caleb. [cringing]). I'm not saying I think Joss goes to White Power rallies or is a member of the KKK. What I am saying is, it seems conspicuous, and at times it's bothersome.

And so. Question four. Am I alone in this? Is there some way to blame the WB for it? I'd be especially interested in hearing from anyone who's not white themselves: how do you watch these shows and find people to relate to? Is it noticeable to you? Does it matter? Is it different if you're not in the U.S.? Etc.

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[> I think there's possibly an issue of writer sonfidence in dealing with people from minority cultures -- KdS, 23:37:26 04/20/04 Tue

It's interesting to me that the only two episodes which portrayed Gunn's street mileu in particular depth, First Impressions and The Thin Dead Line, were written by the same scriptwriter, Shawn Ryan (who would later create The Shield). After Ryan left there was very little.

[> Re: Racism again, but different: -- d'Herblay, 23:56:50 04/20/04 Tue

Thank you for this important post. I have long thought that the Buffyverse was ripe for a frank discussion of race; Claudia's thread was not to be that discussion. I think people in that thread were responding more to the poster than to the post. I hope we can now have that discussion free of the tsuris below.

You are not alone in your frustration. Joss claims that he doesn't do math, and it's apparent that he doesn't do history either (and he seems unaware of the past existence of the Protestant Reformation). I think it's pretty safe to say that race is another thing he doesn't do. Someone recently complained about those willing to throw accusations of racism at Mutant Enemy were taking characters out of context, but it is Joss's lack of providing a realistic racial context for the characters that allows others to read such things there. (The folks at Angel, particularly Greenwalt and Minnear, were always more interested in developing a larger context, whether it be historical or cultural, for their characters to be invested in.) I don't mean to trivialize this, but out of seven years of pop culture references on Buffy, is there even one mention of hip-hop? I discovered Buffy virtually the same week I discovered Homicide, and I love them both dearly, but on racial issues there simply is no comparison. Of course, Homicide features a multi-ethnic range of police detectives investigating murders in a city where a large number of the victims and the suspects are going to be black; its producers had no choice but to tackle the difficult issues square on. Buffy, on the other hand, is in a milieu (post-90210 teen dramas) not exactly known for its diversity. I think you have to dig down to Clueless to find a '90s high school show pitched to a majority-white audience that featured extensive numbers of black characters. (Historically, white people have been perfectly happy watching black actors on TV, as long as they're playing rich people.)

So on the one hand, I'm perfectly willing to characterize Joss's sins as ones of omission rather than commission, and though I feel a twinge of regret at Joss's missed opportunities, I certainly do not feel guilty about watching his work. I just wish that I could hold Buffy to the same praise on racial issues that I did Homicide, and that I accorded Buffy on everything else (except math and history).

On the other hand, because of Joss's lack of interest in these issues, sometimes he does not catch himself when the shows do contain uncomfortable racial imagery. Some have compared Kendra to a "Tragic Mulatta" archetype, and I doubt Joss was even aware of the stereotype, much less how his portrayal of her would feed those comparisons. (On the other hand, Minnear was so familiar with the Tragic Mulatta that he incorporated it into "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?") More bothersome to me was the demonization (even before he met up with Adam) of Forrest late in Season 4. His dialogues with Buffy after Riley leaves the Initiative become just a little too leery not to seem supportive of paranoia about black sexual aggression. But then the most sterotypical African-American character on the show, Mr. Trick (one part Iceberg Slim, one part Morris Day, serve ice cold), never bothered me. In fact, I quite enjoyed his appearances. He is also, I think, the only character to ever comment on how lily-white Buffy's setting was, so he got to be the only character who ever really addressed racial issues, and I think the show was better for it.

Thank you again for posting this; I think it takes real courage to address these issues. Mostly, though, I just wanted to fantasize about a show with Gabrielle Union as Buffy, Omar Epps as Angel, Thandie Newton as Cordelia, Mekhi Phifer as Spike and Roscoe Lee Browne as Giles. Damn straight I'd watch that show.

[> [> Excuse me, *Rose's* thread, not Claudia's -- d'Herblay, 23:58:51 04/20/04 Tue

[> [> Re: Racism again, but different: -- DorianQ, 00:15:04 04/21/04 Wed

Odd tidbit, but I heard that Bianca Lawson (Kendra) said she was given the role of Cordelia but turned it down to work on a different show. Yeesh, how many people had that role before Charisma got it? Lucky for us, she played it perfectly, but it just seemed that it changed hands a lot.

[> [> Oh! Kendra! (minor spoilers AtS S5, S2; BtVS S2) -- mrsubjunctive, 04:27:18 04/21/04 Wed

Duh. It's doubly weird that I forgot her, because I loved Kendra to death. (Whose death? Well, hers, I guess.) It's probably telling that I didn't recognize that she was playing to a stereotype, because I don't know the stereotype. But she was still deeply cool as a character, and as part of Buffy's development as a character, because she, like Faith after her, had a definitely different take on what it meant to be a Slayer. I'm not sure that there's much evidence of Buffy adopting any of Kendra's approach: the convincing seemed to me to be pretty strictly a one-way thing. But at least the writers didn't take the easiest route through the whole business and turn her into Buffy-With-An-Accent.

So apologies to the character of Kendra. R.I.P.

As for Trick, well yeah. It's occurred to me that I may not even have noticed the lily-whiteness of the Buffyverse were it not for Trick's pointing it out. There's a similar moment in AtS, in the episode "First Impressions," where Cordelia goes with Gunn to the party and is more or less the only white person there, where you can't help but notice, as Cordelia does, and realize, as she does, how this has never happened before.

What happened to Shawn Ryan, anyway? Looks like he did five episodes in Season 2 of "Angel" ("First Impressions," "Reunion," "Blood Money," "The Thin Dead Line," and "Belonging") and then vanished. This is sad. "Blood Money" is one of my favorites from Season 2 (partly because I really wanted to know what happened to Chanterelle/Lily/Anne, who's one of my favorite incidental characters, and I'm way stoked that she's going to be coming back one last time). And "The Thin Dead Line" does address, in the Whedonverse's typical slanted metaphorical way, the interaction between minorities and the police.

So I retract the more blankety stuff in my initial post. They have tried to deal with race from time to time, and it seems to me like they've never tried harder than in AtS 2. And then they stopped.

I've also remembered Numero Cinco, from AtS S5. I didn't like him much as a character, or even as a plot device, and put the whole business more or less in the category of Well-At-Least-They-Tried-To-Have-A-Hispanic-Character.

Your post clarified something else for me too, which is to say that I like the phrasing above. I don't feel guilty about enjoying "Buffy" just because it doesn't address racial issues, but it is, yes, more about being disappointed. I don't expect a TV show to describe every facet of contemporary life in exhaustive detail, and I can appreciate if ME wants to choose the topics they have a handle on to address. It's just that it would be nice to be able to say that in addition to all the other things Whedon's shows do well, they also have things to say about race.

And it's not like there's not precedent that leads me to think that they could. At least until they killed Tara, the Tara/Willow relationship was the only believable gay relationship I'd seen on television. (I never really bought Willow/Kennedy, but that was because nobody seemed interested in giving Kennedy much of a pesonality.) May still be. So why would race be that much harder?

[> [> [> Future casting spoiler above! -- Masq, 06:39:49 04/21/04 Wed

[> [> [> Re: Oh! Kendra! (minor spoilers AtS S5, S2; BtVS S2) -- Kenny, 11:20:20 04/21/04 Wed

And it's not like there's not precedent that leads me to think that they could. At least until they killed Tara, the Tara/Willow relationship was the only believable gay relationship I'd seen on television. (I never really bought Willow/Kennedy, but that was because nobody seemed interested in giving Kennedy much of a pesonality.) May still be. So why would race be that much harder?

I think there's enough difference between the two situations that writing race can be harder than writing orientation. For starters, creating a gay character doesn't really imply anything about their background. Most gay kids aren't raised in an environment where being gay is a common thread. That's a stark contrast to non-white kids, who often grow up in mainly black or hispanic or, to a lesser extent, Asian communities. By and large, "gay culture" is something that people adopt, not something people are raised in. You'll find many more similarities between a suburban straight kid and a suburban gay kid than you will a a suburban straight kid and an inner-city straight kid. Even though she's gay, ME is familiar with the environment Willow grew up in.

In the case of writing a non-white character that comes from a non-white community, things are trickier (this is assuming, of course, that the writers are white from middle/upper-class backgrounds, as most of the ME writers seem to be). If you don't want to write a parody of a character, you really have to do some research into what those communities are like and how they shape a person. You can't just rely upon pop-culture images and make assumptions based upon those.

In times past, both black and gay characters were presented as caricatures because that was the politically safe thing to do. We've moved past that somewhat. We've got characters like Chi McBride's principal on Boston Public. While I couldn't watch that show for very long because of DEK's penchant for inane plotting, I thought he did a good job of creating that guy. The fact that he was black didn't dominate the character, but it did help define it. Had the character been white, he would have been different. That, to me, is a good portrayal of a non-white character. With Principal Wood, you could have thrown a white guy in to play him, and the character would have been the same. That's where ME has the problem. If they recognize that they have a hard time writing characters in a believable way because they don't have a firm understanding of the culture they come from, I think it's best that they do stay away from it and let it be written by people who have a better handle on things. Otherwise, you can easily end up with unintentionally harmful stereotypes. Now that writing gay characters as people is more readily accepted, I think it's easier because you can make a character from any culture gay. Being gay, I don't believe that the "issues" I had to deal with growing up were that much different from those of my straight friends. A bit skewed, perhaps, but not that much different.

One thing I've noticed in this thread is people talking about Firefly and Buffy (to a lesser extent) being post-race worlds, where race doesn't matter. While that does sound nice on the surface, I do find it a bit troubling that people would take that as a "good thing", because the default culture in both shows is more akin to white culture than any non-white culture. I'm not trying to ascribe judgment to anyone, creators or posters, who might see this as the situation, but I feel uncomfortable as describing it as post-race. I'd rather see it as non-race, where there were never racial problems to begin with. I'd prefer to use post-race to describe something like Wonderfalls. To me, Majandra's reaction to Gretchen's "girlfriend" (and "shalom"...and "you changed your name"...and activator) is a better post-race statement. It doesn't ignore the fact that different races have had different influences that result in their own idioms, fashions, etc. It's just that, for the "enlightened" characters, those thing really don't matter. If Judy had called Majandra girlfriend, she wouldn't have batted an eye. And Jaye would never call her girlfriend. ME could have probably pulled off that type of playfulness, but it really didn't fit in the context of their shows. Also, props to Wonderfalls for their portrayal of Sharon in the same ep. Her reactions to Beth were sweet and sad and funny and very true all at the same time.

[> [> [> [> Re: Oh! Kendra! (minor spoilers AtS S5, S2; BtVS S2) -- dlgood, 11:54:01 04/21/04 Wed

If they recognize that they have a hard time writing characters in a believable way because they don't have a firm understanding of the culture they come from, I think it's best that they do stay away from it and let it be written by people who have a better handle on things. Otherwise, you can easily end up with unintentionally harmful stereotypes

Alternatively, the writers could educate themselves about the character/subject they intended to write in order to produce a better portrayal.

[> [> [> [> [> Re: Oh! Kendra! (minor spoilers AtS S5, S2; BtVS S2) -- heywhynot, 12:28:35 04/21/04 Wed

Not to mention open the writing group to include non-white voices to increase the diversity of voices & can learn from one another on how to write characters from a larger range of backgrounds.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Different standards for different media? -- Kenny, 19:33:23 04/21/04 Wed

Both dlgood and heywhynot make good points. If you can't write about it, learn or bring in people who can. After all, this is a team effort. My question is, why?

It seems that television is treated a bit different from other media, such as novels, plays, and movies. I can't imagine that someone would say that a black character should be added to "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" series to round it out. I also don't see people complaining that the movie "Pi" (can you even do Greek letters on the board?) omits sins of omission by not featuring any black characters. There have been allegations of how groups are portrayed in specific genres (black people in horror movies comes to the top of my head), but individual movies aren't picked out. Yet individual television shows are picked out. I'd imagine it's because of the (relatively) long-running nature of television. If you write a book, you don't have to worry about people (other than the reader) to interpret it. If you have a movie or play, you have a short time to tell a specific story, so you're not expected to take time out to make some message relating to race. What if someone decides that their story is best told in a serial format? Does that mean they should automatically have to conform to certain standards, including racial diversity, because they choose that medium? Does that compromise artistic integrity and focus of vision to try to make sure certain criteria are met? Does television, as a medium, have different social resonsibilities from other media? If so, to what extent? How does that affect an individual series? Are other media fulfilling their responsibilities to the point that television is just lagging behind?

I sure don't know the answer to any of these questions, and I'd be interested in what other people think about them.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Different standards for different media? -- Sara, 11:03:40 04/22/04 Thu

Well, yeah...Television is a unique medium, due both to the long runs a show has, and to how we watch it - in our homes, eating chips on the couch while chatting with our families. When I go to the movies I don't expect to see me - let's face it I lack all glamour, and my life would not look pretty expanded to a 33 feet wide screen, and yet I cheer whenever I see an older (but not real old) actress on tv with a couple of extra pounds on her (the more the merrier I say!!!) because on tv I want to see my life, because you know it's all about me...

I think it becomes more important for tv to speak to all the varied me's out there. Not that every series is obligated to connect with every person, but it becomes an appropriate discussion point in a way that it's not for a purely personal medium such as novels. A good show, such as Buffy, can connect with people of varying backgrounds through universal struggles, and that's great because it moves beyond the superficial and specific.

I don't think an individual show should be called racist, or even criticized, for a lack of diversity in characters, but an entire network can when looking at the whole slate of shows. TV does have the power to shape our view of normal, and because of that there is a level of responsibility they have for what we see as normal. Cart/horse scenario - they show society as it exists, segregated, limited, but then society is reinforced in that view as the cart starts coming in ahead of the horse. Start showing a diverse picture, it will start feeling like what normal should look like, and I think normal will start changing.

I don't think Buffy or it's audience is racist, but I do think if they could have brought in diverse characters and written them well, it would have made the show stronger. Bringing in diverse characters and writing them badly, such as the can't-be-forgotten-soon-enough Scrappy Do's, is not a good option. But I love Gunn as a character, love the actor, and I think it makes the show richer to have him there. And let's face it, he had one of the coolest moments in last night's Angel.

I hope this isn't what Darby calls Stream of unconsciousness but if it is...I'm sick today, you guys have to be nice to me! (don't you???)

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> I guess I never saw it as -- mrsubjunctive, 15:56:27 04/22/04 Thu

something specific to television per se, and after having tried for a few minutes, I can't come up with anything unique to movies that works as an across-the-board reason they should be exempt. Though in general I think that the time limitations in movies keep them from being as comprehensive or nuanced as a subject like race demands. Or religion, or politics, or sex, or economics, or any other broadly-experienced human trait. It's not that there are no artistically successful films that deal with these things, but they deal by carving off a tiny piece and asking it to stand in for the whole phenomenon.

TV can't really do this either. I mean, no one work, however long, whatever medium, is going to be able to describe, explain, or prescribe for any of these things.

Another factor is that television is invasive in a way that movies, books, etc., are not. These have all been shows on regular broadcast networks, piped to my home for free, provided I turn on the TV at the right times to see them. The TV set doesn't know what race I am, and the advertisers want very much for me to watch regardless of my race. So I kind of expect that they'll offer something for everybody. This is all coming out very badly phrased, but maybe you can see my point. TV is less discriminate, and more directly democratic (insofar as majority viewership, however ill-advised -- "High School Reunion," I'm looking at you here -- wins the sponsors), than media one has to pay to receive.

So do I, then, think that if you decide to work in TV, you have racial quotas to uphold? That you have to sacrifice artistic integrity? Well no. As far as I'm concerned, you sacrifice artistic integrity when you decide this is your medium: you put yourself in the hands of the advertisers, network, and audience, all of whom have to be pleased. I'm not sure that art counts as art if it has to please someone before it even gets made (less of an issue with movies, still less with books), much less please someone new at every stage of the process. This is endlessly debatable, of course. And feel free. But in any event, ethnic composition of the cast, and a socially desirable racial message, will either be accepted or rejected as a part of the whole production. People will like it or not. Sometimes you only get what you pay for.

I'm not comfortable saying that "Buffy" or any other show must or should have something to say about race, exactly. With most other shows it wouldn't, honestly, enter my head. But BtVS / AtS / Firefly are different for me because they do kind of invite it. Critical attention, in general, is rewarded in Whedon's shows, which is what makes them so much fun to watch.

And it could well be that this is my own failing, that my critical switches got flipped and then couldn't be turned back off again, but then there's also: for series that have, in toto, something to say about almost everything, I've been tempted to see what's not addressed as potentially as important as what is. Just trying to ascertain, here, whether or not race has been left out.

[> [> [> [> Re: Oh! Kendra! (minor spoilers AtS S5, S2; BtVS S2) -- Tina, 14:23:13 04/21/04 Wed

There is no such thing as "white culture" and "black culture" (I am black.) What most people in America think of as "black culture" is distinctly AMERICAN. Black people from different places in the world or even from different places in the USA do not all act the same. We do not all grow up having the exact same experiences. We are not just "Black people" we are PEOPLE.

[> [> [> [> [> Treading lightly: -- mrsubjunctive, 16:40:16 04/22/04 Thu

Thanks for chiming in, first off. I apologize if I gave the impression that I don't regard you or any other Black person (the ones in the U.S., anyway) as an American, or that being American or, even, to go more broadly, just a human, doesn't provide enough of a common basis for people of different races to relate to one another.

But, and feel free to kick my rhetorical ass here if I'm off-base, even if Black culture isn't a monolith, that's not to say there's no such thing, right? I mean, a fair amount of American culture was initially Black culture, and vice-versa, is my understanding: the fact that the two may be moving ever-closer to one another doesn't mean that one isn't a distinct subset of the other.

[lots of typing that didn't seem to be making my point, which was deleted]

Am I being insufferably stupid here?

[> [> [> [> [> [> Fool rushing in where angel treads lightly -- Sophist, 19:42:49 04/22/04 Thu

I understand the criticism to be that "race" and culture are 2 different things. I think we should recognize that the phrase "Black culture" is sloppy shorthand.

[> [> [> [> Briefly: -- mrsubjunctive, 14:55:24 04/22/04 Thu

The difference between writing gay characters and non-white characters, as you've put it forth here, works for me. Particularly if, as in Willow's case, there was never an effort for her to investigate or adopt gay culture. [shrug] Which some people don't. So it was buyable.

I don't watch enough TV to get the references to other shows, but I think I can more or less infer stuff anyway. Hopefully.

As far as "Firefly" goes: it strikes me as very consciously and deliberately post-racial, given the setting. And some effort was made to insert elements of Chinese culture -- language, at the very least, but also decor, bilingual English/Chinese signage on things, Blue Sun ads featuring people with definite Chinese features, and a number of other things I'm too addled to recall right now (it's been a long day). My point being that I'm not sure I can go along with the idea that the default culture in "Firefly" is more white than not.

If we're talking about "Buffy," then I'm there with you, though as someone downthread pointed out, it could be read more as simply American than white.

[> [> The Missed Opportunity... -- dlgood, 06:07:06 04/21/04 Wed

Joss claims that he doesn't do math, and it's apparent that he doesn't do history either (and he seems unaware of the past existence of the Protestant Reformation). I think it's pretty safe to say that race is another thing he doesn't do.

And I think this is one of my core problems with Whedon and race. And it ties in to my citicism of the show in terms of its Politics, as well. Namely, that when it comes to topics Whedon "doesn't do", he seems to neglect them entirely. There's sort of a tunnel vision and lack of broader awareness about the world that pervades Whedon's writing.

So, I think, a certain lack of perspective is what colors these omissions rather than any active motivation. Example:

In S3, Angel gets Connor a baby hockey stick, and Gunn comments that hockey is "the whitest sport on earth". Nothing is made of this. Consider the socioeconomics of Sports in America, and particularly what Hockey might well be to a black man who grew up in the LA ghetto.

There's something to be explored between the characters with that. But then, it's probably only included because Boreanaz is a Hockey fan, and the Gunn line is a quick joke. But it's somewhat emblematic of much of Whedon's writing. These are issues Whedon isn't concerned with, so he doesn't concern himself with them. And unless other members of the creative team hop on them (Minear, Greenwalt, Ryan) it doesn't get touched.

Oh. And I quibble with the casting:

Omar Epps: Spike
Mekhi Phifer: Xander
Phil Lamar: Principal Flutie

As to Angel? I don't know who I'd cast. But now I'm picturing a 70's era blaxploitation "Black Angel" starring Richard Roundtree.

[> [> [> Missed by a mile -- Gyrus, 07:55:04 04/21/04 Wed

In S3, Angel gets Connor a baby hockey stick, and Gunn comments that hockey is "the whitest sport on earth". Nothing is made of this. Consider the socioeconomics of Sports in America, and particularly what Hockey might well be to a black man who grew up in the LA ghetto.

What is more, Angel argues that he has chosen hockey because it is played indoors and mostly at night, yet Gunn doesn't point out that the same is true of basketball. This counterargument is so obvious that Gunn's failure to make it seems like a deliberate avoidance of the topic by the writers.

[> [> [> [> Basketball and Hockey -- dlgood, 08:52:04 04/21/04 Wed

It's not so much that a counterargument is avoided - but rather - that I don't think it occurs.

Because either way, if were talking about Gunn and his socioeconomic background, how often was he going to get to the forum and watch Lakers or Kings games in person?

Ice Hockey, in LA, can only be played at night. It would feel natural for Connor and Angel to participate together. And as a young boy, Connor would be more likely to hoop it up outdoors on a sunlit playground - and playing indoors at night would be the exception. Yet another example of somewhere Angel does not fit in.

Gunn, as the "urban youth" one might more closely associate Gunn with daytime streetball. Particularly as in LA, Ice Hockey is expensive to play and street basketball isn't.

But that's a discussion that ME never touches upon either way in any depth, in the specific case. To me, it points to larger issues, but it doesn't have to.

[> [> [> [> [> Re: Basketball and Hockey -- Gyrus, 09:32:10 04/21/04 Wed

Ice Hockey, in LA, can only be played at night. It would feel natural for Connor and Angel to participate together.

OK, color my face red. I was only thinking in terms of WATCHING the game; it didn't occur to me that Angel might be talking about PLAYING the game.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Basketball and Hockey -- dlgood, 10:06:39 04/21/04 Wed

That's okay. Trying to picture Angel (as opposed to Dave Boreanaz) actually playing ice hockey is rather surreal.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Basketball and Hockey -- skeeve, 12:29:19 04/21/04 Wed

dlgood: "Trying to picture Angel (as opposed to Dave Boreanaz) actually playing ice hockey is rather surreal."

Well, he'd win most of the fights.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> "Take care of your teeth, that might work for you . . . " -- d'Herblay, 13:36:43 04/21/04 Wed

.. . . but it's probably imperative for a vampire.

[> [> The key earlier threads on BtVS/AtS race -- KdS, 14:16:30 04/21/04 Wed

Both from August 2002:

General discussion of race here.

Specific discussion of Kendra as "tragic mulatta" here

[> [> [> In defense of ME -- one liner, 10:00:48 04/25/04 Sun

I read through the old thread and noted a very strong point. Out of the six actual slayers shown, four were not white. Three were Black and one was Asian. Portraying the strongest, larger-than-life hero figure on the series as black speaks volumes to intent.

Whether in characterization and portrayal the writing staff included some racist baggage would be almost inevitable as who in a racially charged society is free from bias? At the best, subliminal thought can not be overwritten.

[> [> Well... -- Random, 20:29:01 04/21/04 Wed

Just for the record, this particular person was responding to the post, and did so quite well. You may feel free to disagree with the points I made, but I daresay questions about whether one is choosing a poster rather than a post to disagree with are interesting but, as I've discovered personally, pointless.

[> [> [> Re: Well... -- d'Herblay, 08:40:13 04/22/04 Thu

I do not doubt that you hold the opinions you express with a firm sincerity; however, even casual observers have noted that you tend to show up to refute Claudia with a particular vociferousness and glee. (I am sure that you would have disagreed with Claudia's statements had they been uttered by a regular; I doubt you would have referred to a regular as "not too bright" in a subject line.) You think she's a troll; more to the point, you think the board would be a better place if you went to great lengths to rid of us this troll. I don't see the shame in admitting that.

[> *raises hand* well, if you want to hear from a non-white minority, I'm your guy :) -- AngelVSAngelus, 08:32:19 04/21/04 Wed

Let me first say that I agree with your point that the show generally exists within a sort of post-racial vaccuum. However, this doesn't bother me too much because it is my own personal belief that that may very well be a major step toward more progressive television, in the face of UPN programming that perpetuates stereotypes.
One should be careful in assuming that I (or any other non-white minority) couldn't relate to the characters because they're of a different racial background. This bears assumptions about inherint personality traits and characteristics, and that leads to stereotypes. I'm an African American male, and I very much relate to Xander's fears, Willow's meekness, Buffy and Angel's determination, Spike's rejection, etc. I also relate to Gunn's wanting to belong.
Could Whedon comment specifically on racism? Yes. But, it might mean more to me that he builds characters on such universal hopes and fears that it transcends their racial backgrounds. Some would probably call me naive for that.
I will say that, having a more metropolitan environment my whole life, the more urban flavor of Angel is something I can relate to more than small, suburban Sunnydale.

[> [> Appreciate the feedback. -- mrsubjunctive, 17:33:59 04/22/04 Thu

Tina has pointed out for me (and I am somewhat shamed by this) that the viewers, and also the characters, are all American, and that I shouldn't assume that Black trumps American. (Or, presumably, vice-versa, though she didn't say.)

As for whether it's a step in a more progressive direction, well, maybe. It'd all kind of depend on whether TV tends to lead, mirror, or lag behind social change, and how powerful it actually is in influencing people. "Post-racial" TV, when racial inequity is still rampant in the real U.S., could as easily lead to white complacency as to genuine equality. I've seen people, in all apparent seriousness, claim that "The Cosby Show" in the 80s meant that now racial problems were over and done with: something like, well look, Black people can be doctors now, and the show gets good ratings; therefore affirmative action, integration, etc. must no longer be necessary. (Radically oversimplified, but I'm not kidding that I've seen people write stuff which essentially boils down to this.)

There is, certainly, a great deal to be said for television that builds characters around universal human traits. And incusion of stereotyped characters for the sake of diversity is obviously not helpful. I'd be interested, actually, in seeing a "Buffy"-quality show that worked the other way, that challenged me to find human universals in a Black cast, less because I don't think I could do it than because I don't think anybody's ever asked. Feel free to recommend.

[> [> [> Muddy Waters -- manwitch, 07:22:49 04/24/04 Sat

While I hope there are others, the most obvious one that springs to my mind is the mini-series Roots. One can get sidetracked by the fact that it is about racial issues, but our identification with the characters is based on human universals rather than our own political or social positions. And we do identify with the characters, regardless of our own race. We don't need to be "like" kunta kinte to recognize that we are like kunta kinte. Unfortunately Roots is about thirty years old and its the first one that comes to mind. But your relationship to the protagonist in any story is always through more than their racial or sexual characteristics.

I have more than once heard Buffy described as a feminist show, or a show whose appeal is to women, that it is a show whose purpose is to model strong women. Great if all that is true, but it is limiting to think Buffy is only that. As a gay male, your interest in the show is not simply in Andrew or in whether or not Xander ever figures it out. You identify with Buffy, regardless of the fact that she's a woman. While the show overtly addresses gender issues, its about universals. I am as much Buffy as anyone else in the audience.

It seems to me there is a lot of muddy water in this discussion, a lot of different issues that are, it seems to me, being grouped together and attributed in some way to Joss Whedon. I don't think Buffy is about race relations and I don't think it loses any points for that. I love the movie Jaws, but its not about race relations. I don't see why it would be particularly better at what it was attempting if it were. Shows are about what they are about, and not about what they aren't about. Choices get made.

But a separate argument could be raised as to whether or not there is any obligation to portray, regardless of the story they are telling, a realistic context which might include at least a background of racial issues or elements. It would seem to me that the answer is probably, "no," just on theoretical grounds, but even if it were yes I think someone needs to demonstrate that the "context" of Buffy in this sense is not realistic. I am not yet convinced that an affluent lily white suburban community consciously oblivious to racial issues is a fiction. Still, I'm not convinced that portraying such a community was the intent. My suspicion is that it is probably the result of a certain form of fixed thinking that went into casting.

Casting is another subject entirely. It seems obvious that there are more than enough actors and actresses of various ethnicities that Sunnydale could have been more diverse with no change whatsoever to the story or its themes. The arguments that people in the actual audience are uncomfortable with african american characters or certain aspects of them (like sleeping with Faith) seems to me ridiculous. I don't recall any upset when Giles had Olivia as a girlfriend (except from Buffy, but I think that was age discrimination). If there was discomfort with Kendra it was not her race specifically, but perhaps more of a feeling that a stereotype was being portrayed. Trick is simply a fantastic character, and probably the first non-white character in the Buffyverse given anything close to full development. Its a shame he didn't last longer.

In terms of casting, I can only think of one piece of casting that felt racially motivated, and consequently bothered me. That was Ashanti in the First Date episode. I didn't care that Xander was dating an african american woman. I cared that they cast a "star," and that they advertised the episode as though the reason for watching it was to see this great star, whereas in fact her character had little to work with in the episode. It made me feel like UPN had stepped into casting decisions in an effort to bridge the demographics of their seemingly incongruous Tuesday night lineup. That felt cheap to me. If the audience watching Moesha wants to watch Buffy, they will. And if the audience watching Buffy wants to watch Moesha they will. But to throw a big name into that role to try and manipulate a crossover audience for completely different shows of completely different genres seemed crass to me. I have a more vehement reaction to that than any other piece of casting in the history of both shows, and I recognize there could be some deeply ingrained racism expressing itself in my reaction. I mean, to your point in the above post, maybe Sarah Michelle is racially motivated casting but I just don't notice it.

But a more obvious criticism of the show's casting is simply why wasn't it more diverse? It seems that it could have been. But I'm not sure we have access to the reasons why it wasn't. Some varying degrees of racism on the part of the producers or directors might be a gross oversimplification. I simply have too few insights into the institutional processes and personal choices on the parts of caster and castee to judge. Which is not to suggest that I don't think racism is part of it. I'm just not sure that its reducible to a single person's prejudices.

That said, Buffy deserves a couple of points, I think. Its first inter-racial couple was Giles/Olivia, and here in the United States at least, the white man/black woman combo, while perhaps less "threatening" in the eyes of white culture, is certainly less iconic (I would refer you to a 6-8 year old work by bell hooks, but the title escapes me. But I seem to recall her dealing with this idea in depth). The racial stereotype is of course, the black man and the white woman, usually blonde. As quiet as Giles/Olivia and Xander/Ashanti were as relationships in the series, they offer an image of a relationship not often portrayed as one of equality and thereby provide a different image of african american female beauty than is typically given on television. Which is not to say that there aren't other images of african american female beauty or that the white gaze is the necessary source of that validation, but rather, if I understood bell hooks correctly, that african american women are not generally portrayed or accepted as objects of beauty in the eyes of white and frequently even black men, whereas white women are regularly portrayed as objects of beauty to both (I believe myself to be paraphrasing someone else's argument and lack stats or examples to support this claim). So while Olivia has a small and innocuous role, her comfortable relationship with Giles is not altogether without merit. Arguably, anyways.

And I think it is possibly a plus that nothing was made out of it. Had any character seemed surprised by the race of Giles's girlfriend, rather than simply her existence, there might have been an implication that this was a legitimate topic for debate. Since no one questioned it, questioning it lost its legitimacy. It wasn't an issue, and to make it one, someone would have to argue as to why it should be.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think Olivia represents some grand plan by ME to address racial issues. But I do think its positive. I would have had no problem with her recurring and being more fully fleshed out. Why that didn't happen is another issue about which I know nothing.

And also, while Buffy does not dramatize race relations, it does thematically speak out very critically against the kinds of thoughtways, definitions, heirarchies and institutions that cause us to see "others." Certainly one of its primary themes is the overcoming of separations and the inclusion of others into the group and of "otherness" into ourselves. And the show seems to ask us repeatedly not to dominate others and not to participate in our own domination. There are a lot of scholarly works that speak to these ideas. Foucault jumps to mind pretty readily, but I'm sure there are many many others. Racism is increasingly recognized as a form of domination brought about by language, institutions, and processes in addition to personal failing or pettiness. And the methods that theorists propose for getting out of those traps are pretty much what Buffy does all the time. Don't let institutions define you. Don't participate in heirarchies. Include people based on their abilities rather than your desires. Share your power. Recognize the humanity of your enemies. So there is a sense in which it is hard to imagine any show being a stronger or more vocal proponent of racial and gender equality than Buffy, since it vehemently rails against the sources of both.

No offense intended towards anyone. Just some ramblings.

[> [> [> [> right--even a mannish boy can identify w/buffy! plus race & beauty -- anom, 22:02:52 04/24/04 Sat

"As quiet as Giles/Olivia and Xander/Ashanti were as relationships in the series, they offer an image of a relationship not often portrayed as one of equality and thereby provide a different image of african american female beauty than is typically given on television. Which is not to say that there aren't other images of african american female beauty or that the white gaze is the necessary source of that validation, but rather, if I understood bell hooks correctly, that african american women are not generally portrayed or accepted as objects of beauty in the eyes of white and frequently even black men, whereas white women are regularly portrayed as objects of beauty to both...."

All too true. It's been awhile since I remember seeing ads on the subway or in magazines for a line of beauty products called "Dark and Lovely," but even that was a major improvement, in that it accepted the idea that a woman could be both dark and lovely. At the same time. In the '70s, the ads I saw most often were for a brand named--& I am in no way kidding--"Bleach and Glow" (!!!), featuring a blissfully smiling woman w/almost a bluish cast to her face. She looked as if her face had been varnished. And this was supposed to be attractive.

But I first noticed that lighter skin was apparently valued in black women when I saw a display in a drugstore, a rotating rack of "Black Love" incense (OK, that looks ridiculous now that I've typed it...but, y'know, it was the '70s). Each scent showed a different black couple in bed on the package (except 1 w/just a woman...looking invitingly out at what was presumably supposed to be a black man but in this case was me). As I turned the rack, I realized that in every case the woman shown was considerably lighter than the man. After that I started to notice it elsewhere, esp. on TV. (Ever notice that the 2 "eligible" women on The Cosby Show when it started were much lighter than the rest of the family?) And my 1st roommate in this apt. told me about a black friend of hers who wrote to a romance-novel publisher about writing for a then-new line of black romances. They sent back specs that included separate lists of acceptable adjectives for describing the skin tones of male & female characters. The list for men included words like "ebony" & "chocolate"; the one for women had things like "caf�-au-lait" & "sepia." Yes, it was that specific & that explicit.

There's been some change since then, but not enough. Buffy has done pretty well on this score, as far as I can think, although there are few enough examples to cite--Olivia & Ashanti's character were darker, Kendra lighter. I think Angel has even fewer examples (hm...), none of whom have stayed in my mind clearly enough to let me make the comparison. Well, Judy in AYNOHYEB was very light-skinned, but that was the point--she was passing. There may have been more on both shows & I'm just too tired to think of them. Anyway, I just wanted to look at this facet of the issue.

Then there's the whole hair thing...but I'm not gonna go into that.

[> But they do deal with Race metaphorically -- Kansas, 09:07:30 04/21/04 Wed

I concede the point that ME shows haven't dealt with racial issues that much in the literal sense... but I'm surprised to see someone claim that they haven't dealt with these issues metaphorically. I see tons of relevance to these issues in both Buffy and Angel.

They just don't usually use the sledgehammery approach that, say, the Trek series did/do... and actually, I think the stories are better for it. Even if the relevances may be in some cases unintentional... any series that deals with questions of identity and affiliation as much as Buffy and Angel did/do is going to have relevance to the question of race, even without consciously intending to.

This topic deserves more time than I can devote to it now, but I'll throw out one example: Spike's arc, especially in the latter seasons, makes him a much better exemplar of the "tragic mulatto" figure than Kendra ever was... even though he is superficially "white". If this idea seems far-fetched, take a look at this article: The Tragic Mulatto Myth. If you leave out the gender-specific aspect of the article, the fit is pretty good.

(Unfortunately I can't find an online version of the article by Lynne Edwards that examines Kendra in a similar light.)

[> [> I promised myself that I wouldn't post but... -- Rahael, 09:30:06 04/21/04 Wed

couldn't resist replying here.

I made numerous defenses (against opinions like: "Why are you complaining about race? Buffy is a white show, about white people") of the Buffyverse as a place where you could find metaphoric representations of issues regarding prejudice.

But I've made even more strenuous arguments against the Vampires as representatives of Blacks or even "muslims".

YOu may ask why - well I have problems with otherness being depicted as murderousness. Vamps are on the fringes of society not because they are persecuted by horrible people, but because they kill people for food.

I would be troubled by any association of 'otherness' related to real life prejudice with a group that is depicted as bloodsuckers. parasites. Drinkers of blood and ritual murderers.

If the vampires are the missing black people and that's the best Whedon can do, I have to say "no thanks!"

There is someone who I felt represented me, and the otherness I feel in a society that I both belong to, but which can reject me - that's Buffy. Or as Jane Espenson put it in her commentary on "Earshot" - otherness as specialness. The kind of person who keeps her humanity despite that feeling.

BtVS did a magnificent counterpoint to this - the destructive, 'imagined' otherness, that sneers at ordinary people, regards them as prey, as fodder for their grand plans. That was Warren.

I posit that Warren better resembles Angelus and unchipped Spike than any black, muslim, non-white, or person facing prejudice......

Of course that may not be what you are saying at all in terms of Spike as Tragic Mulatta (though I've also argued here that Spike isn't coded as non-white at all. In fact, I think he's loaded with resonances of Victorian colonialism. Both SPike and Angel throughout both series have explicitly referred to, or been shown in situations redolent of centuries old political conflicts. Plus, Giles' comments re "bloody colonials" show that this is something that Joss didn't ignore!)

You may ask why I haven't launched a stringent defence of BtVS now, to this thread?

Because of "Get it Done". Where they totally overturned the idea of 'otherness as specialness'. Instead it became about rape, about victimhood, of power intruding into your body, taking it over, making you a servant.

And I had always believed that one can take alienation and turn it into compassion, generosity and humanity. That it doesn't make you a monster, but does the literal opposite - makes you more human, retains your humanity.

That's why my earlier arguments failed *for me*, because the personal tropes and paradigms I had used for so long that made the Buffyverse so resonant for me had been utterly changed. I don't say that it's changed for other people, but it changed for me.

Btw, there has been a detailed discussion here of Kendra as tragic mulatta - as search should reveal it in the archives. The author fo the review was called Redcat, and it kicked off a lively discussion. The conclusion of all concerned was that the argument was weak in-so-far as Kendra is concerned.

[> [> Dealing with it metaphorically also makes it more cross-cultural -- Pip, 10:12:16 04/21/04 Wed

While my own country is most certainly racist in many ways, I've spent enough time in the United States to know that my country is racist in a different way from the US. Our histories are substantially different.

Dealing with the problems of race and prejudice in a way that isn't specific to one particular culture (that of the United States) might well mean that ME has to avoid the literal approach. It's impossible to say whether this was in Whedon's mind - but of course, he has experienced more than one culture, with his three years of school in Britain.

As Kansas says, it's a huge topic. And maybe dealing with it by using the specific problems of a specific country wasn't the way ME wanted to go.

[> [> The Tragic Mulatto? -- Dlgood, 11:23:05 04/21/04 Wed

This topic deserves more time than I can devote to it now, but I'll throw out one example: Spike's arc, especially in the latter seasons, makes him a much better exemplar of the "tragic mulatto" figure than Kendra ever was... even though he is superficially "white"..... If you leave out the gender-specific aspect of the article, the fit is pretty good.

Imagine, for a moment, that I'm a bit simpleminded. How exactly, does Spike actually fit in as the "Tragic Mulatto"?

Particularly given that, as a Victorian Englishman, and given other points Rahael made, something of a representation of the imperialist colonizer. And that, far from an oppressed minority, Spike spends the bulk of his existence as a serial killer who enjoys using his power as a means to impose his will upon those around him.

I'm sure Chipped Spike would love to seize upon the "Tragic Mulatto" metaphor as propaganda for himself, but I'm not sure how accurately one could actually apply it to the reality of his existence. He is, after all, a remorseless murder in S4-6. Isn't it rather righteous to repress that?

Care to elaborate, Kansas, because I don't get that.

[> [> [> slight tangent - Spike as captive -- Rahael, 12:58:54 04/21/04 Wed

now that we're on this topic which fascinates me because hey, history!

what follows is a total fanwank, but which I find attractive.

I've recently read a great book by the historian Linda Colley called "Captive narratives", about the history of white captivity in the colonies. It's really well written and has some great insights. Her most profound and final conclusion, is that the most common experience of white captivity in the colonies was in the British army, where working class white men were held captive to their uniforms. Service out there could last for decades at a stretch - they might never see their wives or family again. Most died early, it being a virtual death sentence.

Even if any of them returned, they found England too had become foreign, unsettling, to them.

It struck me suddenly that vampirism could been seen in that context too. William gets captured in an alleyway and whisked away by drusilla, and his world changes forever. He may be 'free' in one sense, but he's also a captive now, to his own nature (or should that be unnature).

SO in the Boxer rebellion, both Spike and Angel stand out as Europeans, but they are both undergoing their own experience of being 'colonised'. One doesn't have to call them 'black' or 'non-white', in order to combine the idea that they could be predator, and captive in one body.

Okay, dinner might be burning so I have to stop there and run downstairs!

[> [> [> No one here is simpleminded -- Kansas, 13:21:42 04/21/04 Wed

I'd prefer to assume that no one here is simpleminded... my purpose in making my previous post was merely to answer the assertion that these series don't address the question of race metaphorically. If anyone wants to take this point further, knock yourselves out...

[> [> [> [> Re: No one here is simpleminded -- dlgood, 15:53:58 04/21/04 Wed

my purpose in making my previous post was merely to answer the assertion that these series don't address the question of race metaphorically. If anyone wants to take this point further, knock yourselves out...

Well if you're arguing that Spike was used to address the question of race metaphorically it would behoove you to actually explain how.

Spike's arc, especially in the latter seasons, makes him a much better exemplar of the "tragic mulatto" figure than Kendra ever was... even though he is superficially "white". ...If you leave out the gender-specific aspect of the article, the fit is pretty good.

I don't get that case at all, have no clue as to how that is supposed to be a good fit at all. If it's not explained I'll think that you're just pulling it out of thin air. And since you raised it, you probably should explain.

[> [> [> [> [> What you're asking me to do, basically... -- Kansas, 12:02:57 04/22/04 Thu

is write up an open-ended defense of an idea I previously posted, without knowing what your objections to said idea are. Actually, without even knowing if you and I have comparable conceptions of what the "tragic mulatto" figure is.

Not that such a thing can't be done... but frankly, it's not worth it to me.

[> [> [> [> [> [> That's not what I'm asking you to do -- dlgood, 18:57:06 04/22/04 Thu

I'm not asking you to defend the idea. I'm not objecting to the idea. I can't even discuss it. Because I don't get it. I don't understand.

I'm asking you to explain the idea. Because I have no idea what the idea you're expressing is.

You said that Spike fits the mold of the Tragic Mulatto. Tell me how, because I don't get it. That makes no sense to me. Draw the parallel. Give me some details. I'd like to understand where you're coming from.

Throw me a frickin' bone here.

[> [> Re: But they do deal with Race metaphorically -- skeeve, 12:57:56 04/21/04 Wed

I don't get either Spike or Kendra as a tragic Mulatto.

If we assume Joss is dealing with race
metaphorically there are two obvious questions:
Which races is he dealing with?
What is he saying about them?

According to Joss, which races have souls?

[> [> [> Re: But they do deal with Race metaphorically -- Rahael, 13:03:08 04/21/04 Wed

Skeeve, you usually seem to come to the discussion slightly late, and post something really short and succint and to the point (or so I've noticed). I'm really glad you came into the middle of this discussion, to make this point!!

And while I've delayed to post this, let me append something here: if Joss can make an american high school girl's life speak to people like me, then he can use american perspectives on race issues speak to us all. BtVS manages to deal wiht the large scale, through the particular life of one girl.

[> [> [> [> Exactly. Let's not forget that -- Sophist, 13:45:23 04/21/04 Wed

the story of Exodus, written from a monocultural, even exclusionist, perspective, can find resonance among diverse groups all over the world. A universal theme makes the specific cultural setting pretty insignificant.

[> [> [> [> Can he? -- Pip, 15:00:05 04/21/04 Wed

Those here who've read the Harry Potter books may be aware that J.K. Rowling has largely removed current race and religious prejudices from her wizarding world. She's replaced them by an entirely ficticious prejudice against the non-wizard, the 'muggles' and those wizards who have non-wizard parents - the 'muggle-born'.

Discussions like this make me very aware why she might have chosen to do such a thing. Discussing real-life prejudices instantly brings our real-life opinions/background into play. I can watch an certain American TV show about American teenagers and think 'ah, yes, the black teenager is the football player, the token black character and they haven't even let him break out of stereotype' - but it doesn't really touch me, because one of my prejudices is 'other countries do things differently.'

Now if you put prejudice into a metaphor, I can sit and watch, say, Lorne, and wonder if he's gay. And then wonder what the hell ME would be thinking of, to make a gay character soulless. And then continue to think, and wonder if it's not more that gay people are seen as soulless, in a sense. Evil demons who corrupt, 'they're going to Hell!' etcetera, et bigoted cetera.

Lorne is one of the nicest people on the show, but he's always going to be seen by the other characters as slightly less than human.

And then you start to think about Buffy, who slays demons. Vampires are evil, they're bad, they kill people. So Buffy kills them, sometimes before they've actually done anything bad. They're criminals, they deserve to get staked! They are evil!

Executions and life-means-life and shooting suspects who turn out to have not actually done anything. That's another 'soulless' class. They won't reform, lock them up and forget about them. We'll ignore the inconvenient evidence (Angel, Spike, Harmony) of the ones who do try and reform, who succeed. Harmony on parole, having to try harder, and knowing that it's unlikely she'll be given the benefit of the doubt.

Is race in this metaphorical mix? Yes, because a metaphor doesn't necessarily have to point to only one thing. A lion can be a symbol of courage, and of strength. That's another advantage of using metaphor rather than real-life. Lorne might be 'soulless' to the other characters because he's gay - or because he has the wrong skin colour. Both ways they see him as less than human.

And the 'souled' are treated far better than the 'unsouled'. It's not real life, of course. Willow, with her soul, gets away with murder. A short course of psychiatric treatment sorts her out nicely. This is obviously nothing like real life, where the comfortably off middle class white person would never have managed to pay for a really good lawyer (who could have argued that she was mentally unstable due to Warren murdering Tara). In real life Willow would never have gotten away with Warren's murder.

We see the 'other' as soulless. Unhuman. How many times have you heard those metaphors?

Buffy lives in a nice, white, middle-class, American world. Surrounded by people she sees as not really human. They don't have souls. They're threatening. No need to give them the same rights as those in her nice little world. No need to see Spike as 'real', until she finds out that he now has a soul. Or does he gain a soul because Buffy started to see him as real?

Who are these demons? What do they stand for? I don't know. But because I haven't been told who they are, I can't sit back on my couch and just watch, smugly, as my liberal opinions are bolstered. Instead I have to lean forward and think.

Who are my demons? Who's less than human to me?

[> [> [> [> [> I like Rowling -- Rahael, 15:14:22 04/21/04 Wed

The thing is, however Draco characterises "Mudbloods", Herminione is silent testimony, in every thing she does, a complete contradiction to his jibes.

She's honourable, talented, kind and good. And it's silently underscored that Draco is wrong and wrong and wrong. Hermione also extends her experience in order to help the house elves, a view point that even Harry and Ron are initially sceptical about.

In the Buffyverse the soulless really are evil. They are unliving testimony that BUffy should stake them. Spike even disgusts himself enough to get a soul.

Now what message do I get about this, as a thinking viewer, who watches BtVS and *sees* a metaphorical tackling of prejudice? *Because I do*

My most important experience of prejudice has got nothing to do with whiteness/non-whiteness. So I do understand that it gets deeper than skin colour.

And I was drawn to the Buffyverse because it really did tackle this issue head on.

The cultural contexts that give rise to particular forms of prejudice may differ. But there is something the gifted writer can bestow on us - and that's empathy. We've obviously seen different characters to empathise with in the Buffyverse (me - Buffy), which kind of also goes towards my other point - our heroes and our hero narratives aren't dictated to us. Rather, we all perceive them differently.

[> [> [> [> [> The problem I have with that interpretation.... -- AngelVSAngelus, 15:16:53 04/21/04 Wed

Is that their soullessness and evilness is not presented in the story as a bigoted misconception on Buffy's, the Watcher's Council's, or any other force of good's part. Its presented as a (meta)physically evident fact.
Plus, you get very odd text vs subtext conflict if its seen that way. If vampires are a metaphor for the minority 'other', what does it mean that Gunn, an African American male, has been battling and killing them since he was twelve?
Now, I don't deny that demonhood has been used through Lorne at times to present a gay-subtext, but I think the writers play a dangerous game of rotating and interchangable metaphors. One minute the soul is a metaphor for love, the next its a conscience. One minute demons are representations of the worst of humanity. Then, for about fifteen minutes, they're used as a temporary metaphor for immigration?

[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: The problem I have with that interpretation.... -- skeeve, 11:45:14 04/22/04 Thu

AngelVSAngelus: "Is that their soullessness and evilness is not presented in the story as a bigoted misconception on Buffy's, the Watcher's Council's, or any other force of good's part. Its presented as a (meta)physically evident fact."

More precisely, their evilness or otherwise appears to be mostly determined by species.
It's hard to be sure, beause we rarely see more than one example of any given species.
Vampires are pretty much all evil.
The exceptions were the ones that weren't allowed to be evil.
Angel, because of a soul forced on him.
Spike, because of a chip forced on him.
Harmony, because of incompetence.

Brachen demons mostly manage to get along with humans.
Just don't let your ex-wife marry one.

Yarbnie demons are apprently harmless.

One can argue about whether the Deathwok Clan of Pylea is good or evil, but mostly they appear to be the same.

[> [> [> [> [> Although is it a problem that Lorne is seen as less than human? -- Bjerkley, 14:35:59 04/22/04 Thu

To an extent, I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'less' than. If it simply means not human, then I don't see that as a problem in itself, because... he isn't. If you meant they view him as inferior in some way, then I would question how far this is actually true. Has any of the Fang Gang generally behaved, once he was part of the group, as if he weren't worth any one of them (and bearing in mind that their very own leader is less than human....)? I would say not so much.

In fact, when his appearance has been an issue it's generally done in a humourous or subversive way, to underline the point that it's really not about how you look - something which occurs naturally enough as a theme in a show about vampires. Although challenging my own cosy liberal world, do I care less about Lorne, than I do, say Gunn, because he doesn't look as human? I would say that this is entirely possible, although confused as to what this reveals about me as a person....

[Since this thread was about race, and not sexuality, I will keep this section brief, but Lorne as a metaphor for a gay man? Maybe, but a far better one was Buffy. Camp doesn't have to mean gay, but this isn't the time for that little discussion]

Your comparison of Buffy killing vampires, and executed criminals is an interesting one, as are the comments you make about the soul. The soul is probably the most troubling issue on either show, and one I doubt to see resolved in my lifetime [although has it ever been confirmed that Lorne is soulless, or are we making assumptions about him just because he's green?]. A question that occurs to me is whether Buffy kills vampires because they are soulless or because they have a tendency to kill humans? Which came first? The dislike at being killed, or the belief that those without souls are in some way evil. This, to me, is where a lot of the analogies, and criticisms of the show based on those, fall down, certainly where the race issue is involved. Because whereas there is overwhelming evidence that vampires are to the last man mass-murderers, and so are hated on those ground, persecuted races throughout history may have been accussed of being all murderers, child killers or worse, yet these were mainly just lies in order to justify/spread an already existing hatred.

You say that Buffy and co don't give vampires the same rights because they threaten her cosy little world, and that is true. But, unlike any other race or minority or whatever that others have felt threatened by, they threaten it by actively trying to kill and her kind. So what's a nice liberal girl to do?

[> [> [> [> [> [> A couple of controversial incidents re:Lorne -- KdS, 13:46:38 04/23/04 Fri

Firstly the "he's not some slimy demon" line when Angel was considering torturing Linwood in Forgiving, which certainly raised some eyebrows.

Secondly, the "blood of the unclean" thing in You're Welcome, although one could excuse that as the writer of the spell book being a bigot.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> I never pay enough attention it seems :-) -- Bjerkley, 14:23:19 04/23/04 Fri

But even given the first example, granted Angel sees Lorne as less than human, but at the same time, when Angel himself isn't human, what exactly is going on there? Certainly it doesn't fit into a nice easy delineation of the white human's superiority over all others.

And then what are we to take of the fact that many demons and vampires consider themselves to be above humans and/or other demons? Just to me seems all a bit more complicated than liberal guilt will allow for.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Ah, I ought to quote the whole exchange -- KdS, 14:49:17 04/23/04 Fri

From buffyworld.com

Linwood deflates, knows it's true. He's got zero leverage. Angel moves to the kitchenette, rifles through the silverware drawer. Lorne moves to him, speaks low:

LORNE
Angel, this isn't some slimy demon you've got trussed up here -- he's a human. (looks at Linwood) Marginally, but still... this isn't gonna bring Connor back.

Angel plucks out a gleaming SERRATED STEAK KNIFE. Darkly:

ANGEL
He'd better hope it does.

It's Lorne, who refers to "slimy demons" being inferior to humans. Which considering he's a demon is squicky.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: A couple of controversial incidents re:Lorne -- skeeve, 07:17:05 04/26/04 Mon

Perhaps Lorne doesn't consider himself slimy.
I can't help with the "he's human" line though.

Regarding "an unclean" to mean "a demon",
Wes made it clear he was quoting.

[> Dicey topic...some thoughts -- s'kat, 15:13:50 04/21/04 Wed

Racism is a touchy topic to discuss in a public forum. For many of the reasons you see in Rose's thread below and for some of the ones D'Herblay mentioned. Generally speaking, I agree with D'H's take. And obviously you aren't alone on what you find bothersome. However...I do think our own interpretations and biases play a heavy role in all of this.
Not to mention the fact that we as a culture and society, and I include everyone in the world in on this one, is *far* too obsessed with "physical appearence" for our own good. We even make the mistake of interpreting race and religion based on "appearance". And we have a tendency far too often to think our view is the *correct* view and that smugness/self-righteousness often is our undoing. What I'm trying to get at is in some cases - it may depend on interpretation.

Here's a few examples:

A friend of mine can't stand the Sopranos. Guess why? No, not the violence. It's because she happens to be Italian/American, specifically Sicilian, and in her view the Sopranos furthers a negative racial stereotype about her culture and race. Is she right? I don't agree with her.
I see it as being about a violent/dysfunctional family that just happens to be Italian-American. My friend is upset because in her view it is one of the few about Italian-Americans and furthers that stereotype. If it was any other ethnic group, she probably wouldn't care. Yet if it were any other ethnic group it would not be The Sopranos. Their ethnicity informs their characters in a certain way. So maybe my friend has a point. Does that make people who watch the Sopranos implicity racist? No. I know quite a few Italian Americans who watch the show as well as other ethnicities. Is the Sopranos racist? No, it isn't saying all Italian-Americans are murders, theives - it's just talking about this family.

Another friend of mine, African-American, despised the Jamie Fox show - for the same reasons that the friend above despised the Sopranos. She found it embarrassing and stereotypical. She however loves Everwood (no African-Americans in Everwood by the way, last time I checked) and enjoys Bernie Mac Show (which is a situation comedy with African Americans.)This friend also reads Flannery O'Connor, which she considers racist, in order to figure out the thinking. Another friend refuses to read TS Eliot, because she knows he's anti-semitic and she's Jewish. I've read T.S. Eliot and I have yet to see any anti-semticism in The Hollow Men or the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Then there are the books that have been censored at different periods in our history:

Huckleberry Finn - this novel was lucky enough to be censored by the white community for it's portrayal of slavery and blacks when it first was published. Then to be censored again by the black community for it's portrayal of blacks and slang twenty years later.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper - when it was first written, back in the 1600/1700's I believe (might be off on the date, too lazy to look it up), it was controversial for it's positive portrayal of the Mohicans and it's statements about how Native Americans (then Indians) had been dealt with. Over 100 years later it is criticized for it's negative portrayal of Indians. In fact my brother found the film version to be highly offensive in it's portrayal - which was even more positive than the book's.

Television writing as I'm sure you know by now from reading this and other boards, is a tough medium to work in. While Joss Whedon had more control over his enterprise than most writers - Fox did interfere as did the WB. They did have a hand in casting. They were the ones who suggested he hire a prettier girl to play Willow for example, the previous choice had been a much heavier set girl and not nearly as attractive. And Whedon flirted with the idea of hiring the gal who played Kendra to play either Buffy or Cordelia. I'm not sure, but I think Fox may have nixed her for Cordelia. They also told him he couldn't show Willow and Tara kissing onscreen during S4. There is actually far more discrimination on network television regarding portrayal of homosexuality than there is on race and it is this issue that ME felt the need to address more directly in the series. When they did? They still ran into controversy. Because they decided to treat the homosexual relationship the same, in their point of view, as any other - they'd planned from the beginning to kill off Willow's lover (at the time they thought it would be Oz, it turned out to be Tara), they planned from the beginning to use this to flip Willow and explore her dark side. What surprised them was how the fans chose to interpret it. Fans felt betrayed. That ME had furthered the Lesbian Cliche. But from the writers perspective they were just telling their story. They kept saying - 'but, but...we planned to kill Oz, we just ended up with Tara...why is this a problem?' The writers were clueless about the Cliche or the danger. And a little annoyed/offended that it existed. Should the writers have kept Tara alive, and not turned Willow to ensure not falling into this trap? This is a question many people have asked over and over again. Not all viewers saw this - so to some extent this view may be considered a projection of the viewers own biases and anxieties and issues on to the text. I'm not saying it is. (It's not all that different from the view that they couldn't kill Rona, Wood or Gunn after S6 BTVS, because they were afraid it would give a wrong message.)

Then there's the debate above me, although not sure debate is the right word, regarding whether Spike was used as a metaphor for racism or is the Tragic Mulatto or rather the evil colonial invader. Personally, I don't see any of the above, the metaphorical structure combined with plot arcs, characterization and author commentary just doesn't support any of these views in my opinion - and I find these interpretations to be projections of the individual viewers ideas and experience onto the text. I'm willing to go along with the idea that an analogy can be drawn between Spike/Angel's/Anya's "behavior" in Europe and the "behavior" of the colonial conquest. But a metaphor? No. Same with the Tragic Mulatto idea - I can see an analogy being drawn from the SG's and the demon communities "treatment" of Spike/Anya to the "treatment" of mulattos in our society as the unwanted other. Analogy is the word here - not metaphor.

The wonderful thing about BTVS and ATS is it is so loosly written in places that you can bring your own subtext and apply it however you like. You do have to be careful though in how strenuously you apply it.

Does Whedon deal with racism? Not really. He seems more interested in a much broader category which racism fits within and that all viewers can relate to and that is "discrimination" and "prejudice". How we discriminate against others? How we judge them? How we treat them? And why? And the consequences of doing so.

Buffy and her friends pay dearly in Season 6 for their treatment of Warren Mears, Jonathon, and Andrew. They don't take them seriously. They underestimate them. And they treat them as nonconsequential - jokes. Emphasis on "treatment" here.

Buffy and Xander pay dearly for how they treat Anya and Spike who are outsiders, considered lesser beings by the group - yet used for all sorts of assorted tasks. But ME does not excuse Spike and Anya decisions either. Nor do they necessarily make Spike and Anya the victims. They keep it ambiguous. None of the parties in that little quartet are good guys or necessarily bad guys. It's about how you treat others regardless of who they are. And the way you do that is with respect - that's how adults treat one another.
Children only treat people they like or know with respect.
Just because someone was a killer does not mean you have the right to be obnoxious towards them.

Oh as a wonderful corollary - Spike/Anya's treatment by both the human community and the demon community is an analogy to how mulattos or people of more than one race (ie. Jewish/Catholic, Black/White, etc) have been treated in our society. Spike belongs to neither community and is ostracized by both. Anya belongs to neither and struggles with both. It's important to note what ME is doing is an analogy not a metaphor. They are not drawing an exact comparison. What they are doing is showing a common behavior pattern and explaining the consequences as well as its effects. A direct metaphorical comparison was Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. Both addressed the issue, just one metaphorically and head-on, and one indirectly through analogy. The Spike/Anya analogy is troublesome, because we are in the pov of the abusers. And the abusers appear to be right. Also in the Spike/Anya analogy the field is much much larger - because it is dealing with discrimination against ex-cons, veterans of bad wars, it is dealing with *not* the victim but the abuser - how to put this so people will understand, through the analogy the writers are examining the issues of being outside society, of not being accepted, and how you handle that. They are not saying Spike/Angel/Anya are mulattos and mulattos are murders. That interpretation is metaphorical and not supported by the text. They are saying that treating people who don't belong with anything less than respect has consequences, that when we don't belong we need to find the strength to deal with that rejection and not lash out, to find a way to connect. Instead of painting a good guy/bad guy - and even Are You Now avoids doing that, (the woman in that piece is a thief and does accuse Angel of being the hotel bad guy to protect herself), what they are examining is the behavior, what causes it, why, and the consequences. They don't give us any answers either. They ask us to draw our own. And in a way that makes us both uncomfortable and even more compelled to watch. It would be easier if the series were more like Homicide Life on The Streets or even NYPD Blue.

OZ and The Initiative and Demons. This is also more of an analogy than a metaphor by the way. The Initiative treats the demons with no respect as things they can do whatever they wish to - this is an "analogy" to what the Nazis, etc have done to people and animals throughout history. Throughout the series we see how Buffy is told to treat demons with respect. She can kill them. She can do away with them. But when she tortures them or derides them - she OR Willow. Buffy, after all, does not kill anyone just because they are a demon, but because she knows they will kill others if she doesn't do so. She kills vampires who do not have chips or souls because they will kill someone else.
But she draws the line at torturing them and often apologizes to the newly risen. Why? Because they are sentient creatures that deserve respect. To treat them with anything less would be sinking to their level. As Buffy states to Giles in First Date - we don't combat evil by doing evil.

In short, I think ME did address racisim and other related issues but through analogies and not safe comfortable ones. They also aren't always nice and don't provide us with answers to these moral dilemmas. They just show us the situation and the consequences and leave it to us to draw our own conclusions, occassionally, this being TV, stumbling.

Remember, just because a series chooses not to have minorities in the lead roles does not mean it is not addressing these issues. And just because it does have minorities in the roles - doesn't necessarily mean it is.
How we view the way the issue is being addressed by ME is I'm afraid largely subjective. You are going to be hard pressed to get an objective response to this issue. It is, however, an interesting issue to discuss on the internet, where we have no ability to pre-judge our fellow correspondents based on appearance or religion or our personal knowledge of them (well most of the correspondents at any rate.)

[> [> A brief point -- Rahael, 15:25:26 04/21/04 Wed

I think you are endowing my thoughts on colonial coding and the vamps with a little more crudeness and less nuance than which I posited them....it's not meant to be a slam. I have strong feelings about empire, but because I approach it from an academic standpoint, i tend to be more objective toward it than I am towards, say, LMPTM. Nor am I saying that ME put those coding there, because I think they are pretty bad at history. I'm saying they could be seen there, for our discussing pleasure...

[> [> [> Re: A brief point -- s'kat, 15:46:06 04/21/04 Wed

I think you are endowing my thoughts on colonial coding and the vamps with a little more crudeness and less nuance than which I posited them....it's not meant to be a slam. I have strong feelings about empire, but because I approach it from an academic standpoint, i tend to be more objective toward it than I am towards, say, LMPTM. Nor am I saying that ME put those coding there, because I think they are pretty bad at history. I'm saying they could be seen there, for our discussing pleasure...

Not really. I said that it was a projection of both viewers ideas and experience - which you actually admit to above.
"I have strong feelings about empire" and your academic background is in History, so you would have a tendency to view the series through a historical lense. Also you mentions these are "your ideas". I don't state they are emotional necessarily. Subjectivity doesn't always arise from emotion. Just as I occassionally view it through a legal lense and interpret things the writers probably never intended. (My whole SR debate is an example.)

Didn't say it was wrong or invalid necessarily - just said that I did not see it in the plot structure "metaphorically" or "literally", which again you concede - "stating ME isn't good at history and doesn't really put it there". I do see it as an analogy.
Very much so. So if you are making an analogy between colonial invaders behavior and Spike/Angel - then yep, very clearly there. The behavior is similar. Almost similar enough to be metaphorical, but not quite in my opinion, which could also be subjective on this point.

Not sure where "crude" comes from...let's look at what I said for clarity.

"Then there's the debate above me, although not sure debate is the right word," (Ah that was what you may have taken issue with, sorry, I was feeling sympathy for poor Kansas, whom I knew would get blasted the moment I read his/her post...meant to delete that bit, I can see why she/he got blasted and you were very nice about it. Apologize for the snark.) "regarding whether Spike was used as a metaphor for racism or is the Tragic Mulatto or rather the evil colonial invader. Personally, I don't see any of the above, the metaphorical structure combined with plot arcs, characterization and author commentary just doesn't support any of these views in my opinion - and I find these interpretations to be projections of the individual viewers ideas and experience onto the text. I'm willing to go along with the idea that an analogy can be drawn between Spike/Angel's/Anya's "behavior" in Europe and the "behavior" of the colonial conquest. "

[> [> [> [> Yeah you're right! -- Rahael, 16:01:59 04/21/04 Wed

and I find these interpretations to be projections of the individual viewers ideas and experience onto the text

But some people say that like it's a bad thing! LOL. So I just wanted to check. I think it's better to do that, than to say, announce that what you see is what is there. Cuz I don't think the show I see is the show other people see, and I mean that in a good way for all concerned.

[> [> [> [> [> My point, Exactly!! -- s'kat, 20:02:25 04/21/04 Wed

SK: and I find these interpretations to be projections of the individual viewers ideas and experience onto the text

Rah: "But some people say that like it's a bad thing! LOL. So I just wanted to check. I think it's better to do that, than to say, announce that what you see is what is there. Cuz I don't think the show I see is the show other people see, and I mean that in a good way for all concerned."

No, no not a bad thing at all. Glad I clarified.

I agree with your statement.

My problem with a lot of what I see online is
the pronouncement of opinion as fact or this is "what is there" and there is no other view. Excuse me, but isn't part of what is enjoyable about a discussion - seeing more than one view or perspective? If the show only had one possible interpretation would we even be interested in discussing it?

Personally, I find the various interpretations fascinating for what they say about the show and what they say about the people watching it.

[> [> Ack! Correction. -- s'kat, 15:26:54 04/21/04 Wed

But when she tortures them or derides them - she OR Willow.

Ack!! This should read:

"But when Buffy tortures them (demons) or derides them, she, or Xander, or Willow, or Faith reaps the consequences."

This is what happens when you get disconnected 15 times while attempting to write a post to voy. Ugh.

[> Racism and art...rambling philosophy -- Random, 21:48:44 04/21/04 Wed

A fundamental question that haunts modern Hollywood (generic for all TV/movie industries) is one of social responsibility. Art has a purpose, all agree on that. What starts hellacious firefights in both popular discourse and the most cloistered groves of Academe is the discussion over what that purpose is. We are no longer content to claim it holds a mirror up to nature. From being reflective or dogmatic, it has become transformative. And to what end?

So we are faced with the dilemma that winds through every medium, every format. To what extent should minorities be promoted and examined within the context of the art? Hence we get commercials and teeny-bopper TV shows that display a veritable rainbow of culture and skin tone, and while one may protest that this is not reflective of current society, wherein social segregation is often the sad reality, it is worth asking whether the obligation to make such dynamics normative outweigh any concern for statistical breakdowns. When we see a commercial that quite deliberately includes people from all walks of life, many cultures, we see an admirable, if calculated (these are corporations, after all, trying to connect with their audience and sell their goods or services) creation of a representative segment of the population. We certainly don't need to go back 30-40 years to a time when non-white faces were rare indeed in TV shows except in stereotyped roles, and practically non-existent in advertising. Social responsibility is a good thing, and diversification of race and culture in art is desirable. It is not the end that creates the most debate, but the stickier questions of how one approaches the role of the artist in society.

Many people have argued -- some quite effectively, some clumsily -- that ME has a social responsibility to its audience. I personally disagree to a large extent, not necessarily because I don't believe in social responsibility (I do) but because I have very troubling questions about the balancing of social activism against the demands of the art as entertainment and creation. There is no reason why the two must be separate. Writers as diverse as Anita Desai, Chinua Achebe, Harper Lee, Sembene Ousmane and Charles Dickens have incorporated social activism quite brilliantly into their works, and one could no more separate that element from the art than one could remove the themes, or the settings, or the plot. The real question is whether there is a pre-existing social responsibility. Is there some sort of expectation laid on the creators of art to uphold a popular standard for examination of the issues that are important to a large segment of the population?

So the presence of ethnicity is clearly not enough for many. Presence without commentary is a horse of a different colour from a medium which actively addresses the issues. My question is, to what extent are those issue pressing within the context of the art? Does one, for instance, have to examine Principal Wood in ethnic terms? Buffy's little slip about the "hood" was summarily addressed, and from that point on, I cannot recall a single instance where the colour of Principal Wood's skin was even peripherally relevant to rhe plot or the themes. Even LMPTM failed to offer a compelling case for ethnic examination. I recall some people attaching importance to the fact that Nikki was an unwed teen mother to the issue of race, but I failed to see how ethnicity was central -- had Nikki been white, it would have made little difference to how ME portrayed either her or Robin.

Let's consider BtVS. Take the example of the cliche of the Tragic Mullata. It's an old one -- Aphra Behn did the Tragic Mullato back in the 18th century -- and quite deserves examination being given. Can it be subverted? Is subverting it a good thing? The answer to both questions, as far as I'm concerned, is a resounding yes. Note -- and this is very important, though -- that these questions aren't the same as should it be subverted. We're in much stickier territory here. Is there an onus for the form of social responsibility that subverts harmful (however you choose to assign harm from a TV show) cliches? In effect, you're asking whether the subversion and subsequent normative creation is necessary. And that touches on the freedom of the artist to choose the balance between social responsibility and personal creativity. As I said, much of art lacks this dilemma because the artist already requires the social issues in order to complete his or her art.

Once the subversion of a cliche has gone on long enough, it ceases to be subversion. This is axiomatic. It becomes the norm, a new cliche, and the orginal cliche would actually fall into the category of subversion. The Tragic Mullata is no longer, and now we are faced with whatever has replaced it, be it the Mullata Triumphant, or the Fallen Oppressor or whatever. One could argue that this is a preferable scheme, and I'd certainly agree. However, I'm bothered by the assumption that the end justifies the means. Call me dogmatic, but I tend to think in deontological terms in much of life, be it a hotbutton issue like racism or a tiny issue like how to prepare dinner. So short of transforming Kendra into, say, a white male and thus avoid this cliche altogether, we must ask the very hard question of whether ME failed from a storytelling point-of view. It seems obvious that many would gladly see a change in the plot in order to avoid the cliche, and I can't begrudge them that perspective. But I can say that the existence of the cliche interfered not at all with my perception that the Becomings were well-nigh perfectly written and altering them would only be justified if one percieves that the social responsibility of the artist outweighed the precept that art is ultimately an individual act of imagination and no stigma can be attached to either the presence or absence of attention to certain social issues. Personally, I feel that avoiding the "cliche" in order to single out ethnic minorities for special treatment except in issues that require it, such as racism and culture, is not a socially progressive act.

In such texts as Virginia Woolf's assertion that Shakespeare, for her, was a woman (reflected in her perambulations about Shakespeare's forgotten sister) to Maya Angelou's less-well-explained iteration that Shakespeare was a black woman, we encounter a profound realization: the audience is attempting to engage art in terms that are not merely pedagogical, but reciprocal. There is a recurrent need to either identify with art or to reinterpret it through the pre-existing filters that culture and social structures impose on us. Art that does not engage us isn't art. This is apparent in such issues as theme, where we quickly lose interest if the art fails to find some theme or issue we can care about, or at least understand. Likewise, an issue like race certainly influences the viewer -- if one incorporates the issue of race into one's identity (and we all do to some extent, unless we are somehow utterly isolated from any variation), one instinctively, and usually quite consciously, relates to the art in terms of race to some greater or lesser extent. Hence the fact that the TV show "Friends" has become something of a running joke amongst comedians fancying themselves social commentators, for the lack of racial variegation on the show quickly becomes not only noticable, but actually distracting. How likely is it that one can live in NYC for ten years and never appear to encounter non-white people? These observations are not the exclusive domain of non-whites. Whites are likewise bemused and/or bothered by the racial demographics. The point is, any discussion of race in the Buffyverse must ultimately be a discussion of how the audience interacts with the show. Without getting into rather complicated anthropological and literary theory, it suffices to say that many valid arguments can be made for the co-eminence of the audience with the artist. Art does not exist in a void (except in the most abstract "does a tree falling in the woods makes a sound?" way) and in order for it to be effective, either the artist or the audience or, usually, both must establish some common ground. Hence Angelou's assertion didn't mean that she thought Shakespeare was literally a black woman...but that she, as a black woman, interpreted Shakespeare through her own thoughts and culture...and recognized something in his art that clicked with her own experience. It is important to point out that she is not absolving the artist of social responsibility, merely commenting on the interpretation process and empowering herself in relation to the dominant culture, then and now.

What is "meaningful"? One can argue that the fact that BtVS does not reflect every demographic in equally substantial terms is meaningful, and I would agree. However, I might not agree on what the meaning actually is, or whether a given presumption should be taken as reliable. Overt racism? No, I see no support for that. Culturally-sublimated subconscious racism? We could argue all day about that and be no closer to being able to prove yea or nay. It's simply unprovable short of mindreading. So we examine the preponderance of the evidence and sift through until we come to a conclusion that we are comfortable with. However, I must ask this: is the lack of racial diversity an issue unto itself, or is there something else? Because I'm tempted to note that there seems to be a certain drive toward a largely-unspoken point: are we assuming that ME has somehow failed some pre-existing criteria? There is certainly the appearance of some assumption in that regard. What should ME be doing to meet our standards? I have my own standards, like everyone else, and am disappointed in ME for not meeting them. LMPTM barely registers on my radar, but Seeing Red and Dead Things both do quite strongly. It's not so much a matter of priorities but interpretation (I've been peripherally accused of racism, for instance, because I interpreted something as not being racist...the assumption that the person made was false because s/he failed to realize that my priorities didn't come into play when my interpretations didn't see the issue as actually being relevant.) So ME as far as I'm concerned, ME certainly does have a social responsibility to the audience. The real question is, what is it, and who decides? Because there gets to be a point when input from every possible demographically-divided segment of the population overwhelms the art itself.

[> [> Art and resonance -- Darby, 08:15:06 04/22/04 Thu

I think that part of it is that the shows are based in a barely-skewed version of our world, and the meat of the series is in the differences. We don't have vampires, demons, and apocalypses every May, but we do have high schools, doomed romances, and battles to fight.

But there are other differences, such as the lack of minorities, both generally and specifically, that become troublesome once you've noticed them. If the shows are omitting aspects of the "real" world, we have to wonder, is there a significance to the omission? For compulsive explainers like the folks here, this becomes fodder for speculation.

Some types of speculation are more controversial than others, but that's the nature of our 'verse here.

Responsibility in an artist is a tricky issue - if a type of art has a potential effect, I would think that an artist in the medium wants to know that, to use, avoid, or hammer as they see fit. My problem with the "Lesbian cliche" has always been that a) I expected sophisticated showbiz types to know about it and avoid such a spot-on rendition (the timing of Tara's death after nookie would have been an easy change, for instance), but more importantly, b) I kept expecting them to at least acknowledge that they might have stumbled into it, to give us an "Oops, sorry!" rather than a "You folks are all nuts!" response. It was an assumption on my part of responsibility on theirs - I thought I was just being fair, but LOTS of people didn't agree. An extension of responsibility to me as a writer now might be to just shut up about it, since it very well might divert this discussion away from the actual topic, and I know that, but I feel that it's too good an example to shy away from in terms of the topic.

Hey, at least I'm going in with full disclosure...

[> On blaming the WB... -- shambleau, 11:58:06 04/22/04 Thu

Well, I've read that Cordelia was originally envisaged as black by Joss, but the WB nixed it. He went along to get the show on the air. So, you could blame them for that.

As for "vanishingly few of the main characters in aby of Joss Whedon's shows are non-white", it's two out of nine on Firefly and it was one out of five on Angel, which is roughly what the ratio is in real life.

Darla/Master scene -- ghady, 03:28:39 04/21/04 Wed

What episode of what show is the scene where the Master turns a dying Darla into a vampire in?

Replies:

[> Re: Darla/Master scene -- mrsubjunctive, 04:30:27 04/21/04 Wed

I think it's AtS 2.9, "The Trial."

[> [> Re: Darla/Master scene -- Alistair, 04:59:26 04/21/04 Wed

It was AtS 2.7 Darla - part 2 of the crossover event with "Fool for Love" on Buffy.

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