Anybody who’s been reading Buffy web sites can’t have failed to notice that a lot of lesbians have taken offence over the Willow and Tara storyline.
To sum up >
Tara dies, Willow loses it and goes on a rampage.
Somehow, this is indicative of an anti lesbian agenda by the writers. See, lesbianism is fundamentally evil and therefore lesbian characters must be punished.:rolleyes:
This winds me right the fuck up. First off, Lesbians are a minority group who are subject to discrimination and judgement. You’d imagine that they would think twice before dishing out judgement to others.
What’s worse, a homophobe accusing someone of being homosexual in an offensive way, or a homosexual accusing someone of being a homophobe in an offensive way? In my book, both are pretty damn bad and both spring from a lack of understanding or an unwillingness to understand another’s point of view.
I for one would hate to be a writer, and write a convincing, normal and human minority character only to be accused of being a bigot or having an agenda when I decide to kill MY character off.
What do people want? Sure, people want to be represented in books and in movies as normal human beings. I’m Irish, and I’d like to see a few Irish characters on TV that don’t talk with a silly accent (yes you Angelus!), aren’t members of the IRA, and dont have a pint of Guinness and a fag in each hand. What I do not want to see is an Irish character on TV who can’t die or can’t ever be sad in case Irish people might be offended.
I think the writers of Buffy made exactly the right choice. What other character could they kill off that viewers would actually care about? One assumes that Xander and Willow were locks to stay in til the end of the series. Anya is annoying and useless, so if she died the emotional impact would be nil. Even more so with Dawn. Heck, if they’d offed Dawn, people would be dancing in the streets. On the other hand, Tara was a very sympathetic character that I at least cared about. Having her die was a real wrench. And it gave us a chance to see VengeanceWillow (yum yum…)
WTF problem do people have with Anya? I think she’s a great character. Some misguided chick who lost her ability to dictate things and muck shit up finds herself back in love in a world she had let pass her by. She rocks. I think Xander is a condescending prick to her half of the time (especially right around The Body).
Also, so far I kind of like Dawn. I’ve only seen the last few eps, plus one or two in the middle, of season 6, and I’m probably passed the middle of season 5 on cath-up-on-FX. I think she’s a decent character from what I’ve seen of her.
Anyway… I agree with the OP. There isn’t any statement here about how stupid it is to be a lesbian or something. That they were lesbians wasn’t even a direct cause of Tara’s death. Or possibly even an indirect cause.
Was Joyce’s death a shot at single moms everywhere?? :rolleyes:
Right on, erislover. I really love Anya; she’s got moxie, she does. High Anya points for me are her attempts to understand death in The Body, trying to get Xander to leave town with her before the Mayor’s Ascension, and, of course, the bunny song in Once More, With Feeling. She’s like Groo, but so much less irritating (and she knows how to say “pur-pleh”). Dawn’s okay, in my book. As for issues of an anti-lesbian agenda, does anyone ever take into consideration the fact that on Buffy we had one of the most sympathetic, normal-like, and uncontroversial portrayals of two women, in love, raising a teenage girl who just lost her mother and her sister (and whose father is off God-knows-where–and doing a pretty damn good job of it, in my book?
Unfortunately it seems that there’s always somebody who’ll complain. I remember when “Basic Instinct” came out that there were groups that protested against the portrayal of a bi-sexual woman as a killer. Same thing with “Silence of the Lambs”, where the killer had problems with his gender identity.
On the one hand I find it positive that there are people who keep their eyes open for any discrimination and feeding of prejudice that might occur in the popular media, but there is always the danger of it getting out of hand.
I will be sorry to see Tara go, I really liked her.
HEY!!! Anya is the funniest character on the show! Tara on the other hand was a blah character. Sure I felt sorry for Willow, but I didn’t give a damn about Tara, and it wasn’t cuz she was a lesbian…
And I also like Dawn… sure shes whiny and a brat sometimes… but that goes with being a teenager.
So in other words a homosexual should never be killed off in a show/movie ever again because it is discrimanatory? Effin ridiculous!!!
I’m with you about the Irish characters too… if i see one more cop with an Irish accent again im going to scream!!! I have yet to meet a cop with an Irish accent! And the exaggerated NY accent bugs me too! Not everyone here speaks with a heavy Brooklyn/Long Island/wherever NY accent (I don’t.)
Ok im done now
I’m going to have to second, or third, or fourth the Anya thing. She is one of my favorite on the show. In fact, I she is my favorite character on the show. I think Xander is such a prick because of the way he treated her during the time they were together.
I am going to have to agree with burundi. There was no other logical choice here.
Buffy, no, can’t kill her, yet.
Willow has developed into a major power, may need her next season.
Xander is basically comic relief and he has always had a thing for Buffy. He is also one of the originals, so you can’t off him.
Anya has the whole vengance demon thing going for her. It could be played in a number of ways which may come in handy for Season 7.
Dawn has been a pain in the ass since her arrival, kill her off and no one will care.
Giles is already gone, and fans love him.
Spike can’t be the one to go as he has an important part to play in Season 7 and is actively involved with Buffy and the rest of the gang.
This brings us to Tara. Tara is gentle. Tara is sweet. Tara has had a hard time. First with her family, then with Glory and finally with Willow’s “addiction”. Tara never hurt anyone. She became almost a “mother-figure”, a calm in the face of the storm type character. Her sexual orientation doesn’t have anything to do with anything. We, as fans, came to rely on Tara to keep everyone else on an even emotional keel. No wild outbursts from her, no sir-ree. She was the vessel into which we poured our troubles. I don’t really like Tara, never have. But she is the only character, IMHO, whose death would have an impact on all the other Scoobies, not unlike Joyce.
I think you’re taking this out of context. You see, it wasn’t just one character death. What I personally am peeved about with this is that almost every gay relationship portrayed in movies and TV ends in tragedy. It’s gotten to where I flinch every time I see a gay couple who are obviously happy and mutually supportive on a screen; it’s obvious that they’re bound for some horrible fate.
What happened to Tara was worse than a tragedy; it was a tired, trite, cliched tragedy, with all the surprise and imagination of a rendition of Happy Birthday by your Applebee’s waitstaff. It wouldn’t have bothered me if it hadn’t been so predictable. Tara’s death could have been a part of any one-hour drama on TV, including soap operas.
We just expected more imagination from Whedon, that’s all.
But haven’t we seen this before? What about every multi-racial relationship on TV? Wasn’t there a time where this was a sure sign that the relationship was doomed? Before that, if, in a heterosexual relationship, the female wanted to work outside the home was a sign of a marriage on the rocks. Not so anymore. Society is slow to evolve, and I think this is just the latest example of that change. You have to agree that the Tara/Willow relationship is a benchmark. Here were two people that loved and supported each other, and while they did shove the “I’m gay” in your face at times, the whole relationship wasn’t angst ridden because of it. In other words, neither Tara nor Willow would agonize over being gay, as has been seen in other productions. There was jealousy, there were arguments, but overall, their relationship was shown as a solid one, and not played for laughs.
But on Buffy every relationship ends in tragedy. Giles/Jenny, Buffy/Angel, Willow/Oz, Cordy/Xander, Dru/Spike. Should an exemption be made for Willow and Tara because they’re gay?
Also, why blame Buffy for the hack writing that goes on in 99% of other movies and TV shows. Is it not enough to have a positive 2 year lesbian relationship on screen? Does the end negate all the good stuff that went before it? I wouldnt blame Mutant Enemy if they steered clear of this area in the future, because it seems like they’re being punished for the sins of other writers.
Most of the lesbian Buffy fans I know (and you’d be surprised how many of us there are) don’t have the reactions you’re talking about. That’s a small minority getting defensive, that’s all. Lesbians have been treated as negative/evil for so long in TV and movies, that some people watch these shows primed for offence. Of course, Willow is pretty negative and evil right now, but it is just coincidence - it’s just hard to see it that way sometimes!
Btw, just because lesbians are a minority group doesn’t mean we can’t judge others. I see that said all the time, and it makes no sense. Belonging to a minority group doesn’t make you automatically fair and tolerant. We are human like anyone else, and as such we demand the right to be prejudiced!
I don’t think it’s offensive; I think it’s bad writing.
One of the biggest tasks a writer faces in the pursuit of quality work is the avoidance of cliches. It’s one of the biggest things an editor screens a work for; if something tired and overused has made its way into a screenplay or a novel, it’s usually despite a concerted effort to avoid such things (or it’s a clever play on a hackneyed old saw).
Take, for example, the special bullet-cam effects from The Matrix. The first time you saw Trinity hang in midair as the camera whirled around her, you gasped. But these days, the only movies using that effect are along the lines of Kung Pow- Enter the Fist. Why? Because it’s been done, it was interesting once, it made its point. It’s a cliche. Using that effect in a new movie would immediately get the director labelled as a hack these days, and rightly so.
The first time I saw this particular cliche, the good gay relationship finally attained only to end in violence, was Torch Song Trilogy, back in 1988. It was devastating; I cried. I’ve seen it reiterated in movies, tv shows, plays, novels, and so on regularly since then. Each time it has lost impact, until it’s become trite and predictable.
Drama, IMHO, is the quest to invoke genuine emotions about fake people. If we know what’s going to happen to the fake people well in advance, if we’ve seen it happen time and time again, it is no longer tragedy, it’s approaching farce.
All the more reason that I’m disappointed in a writer I respect as much as I do Whedon pulling this gag out of the Ol’ Cliche Box. As you note, it’s been going on for generations now; it’s beneath him.
Yet another reason this particular plot twist was trite and predictable. Yes, I expect a lot from the writers of the shows I watch; that’s why I watch these shows. I was disappointed in what I saw as a completely boring, totally obvious turn of events, from a writer who has in the past shown imagination and daring.
If I turned in a script that closely resembled Look Who’s Talking today, I’d be laughed out of the agent’s office. Why? Because that trend has been, made an impact on the public mind, and gone. It’s been done, in other words, to death. If I’d turned it in a year before Look Who’s Talking and its endless sequels hit, I’d be a genius. Or at least a more successful screenwriter.
Any writer will tell you that a knowledge of the body of literature that has come before you is essential, mostly to avoid the kind of cliche trap pointed out in the OP. Writing doesn’t take place in a cultural vaccuum; the success of a work is determined not just by the quality of the work, but by the audience’s reaction. And if we’ve seen it before, time and time again, it’s bound to bore a lot of people.
SweetZombieJesus is right, all relationships in Buffy are doomed.
Way back in series 1 it was foreshadowed ( ep 1,2 or 3 )
lightheartedly when the Scoobs are sitting around and offhandedly agree that they will never have a decent pairing.
MrVisible: Gotcha. Check. Bad things are never allowed to happen to gay couples on television. Of course, this isn’t going to help with increasing gay representation on the tube, because it’s going to make every gay couple on television boring as hell.
Sorry, but if you’re doing continuing, episodic storytelling, happy, long lasting relationships are the kiss of death. There’s no drama in that, and Buffy is a (horror/comedy/)drama. People don’t want stories about being in love, they want stories about falling in love. This works great with movies, because after the leads fall in love, the movie ends and everyone goes home. But on television, the viewers are going to be back next week expecting something new. So, television relationships don’t last. Love interests die, or leave the state, or turn evil and kill all your close friends and relatives, but they don’t stay love interests for long. This isn’t a cliche, is all but the definition of the genre.
Now, the idea that gay love always ends in tragedy is a cliche, and I’d be right with you if the tragedy in Buffy had anything to do with the fact that Tara and Willow are gay. If Tara had, say, comitted suicide, or been institutionalized, or gotten “cured” and started dating guys, yeah, that’d be an offensive way to end the relationship. If she’d been shot because Warren was a vicious homphobe who’d specifically targetted her for being a lesbian, it would at best have been trite. However, she wasn’t killed because she was gay, she was killed entirely by accident. The story line could have worked just as well if it had been Oz standing there instead of Tara. In other words, Tara and Willow’s relationship was treated just like any other relationship on the show. Which is, and correct me if I’m wrong, exactly what we want TV to be doing with gay relationships.
Yeah, it does suck that this was pretty much the only positive, realistic gay relationship on television. That’s not Joss’ fault. And if this is the thanks he gets for his efforts, it’s probably going to be a while before we see another one. I hope everyone likes Will and Grace, because that’s all we’re going to be getting if you have your way.