I don’t see how Jenny’s death had any moral aspect to it. Because she was trying to bring back Angel’s soul? I don’t know that she knew she was going to be killed for doing that.
Ummm…I didn’t say it was “moral”. Murder never is. I said it had meaning. She died attempting to restore Angel’s soul, trying to correct a terrible mistake for which she was to some extent responsible. Angel wouldn’t have killed her if she hadn’t been doing that.
Yes he would! He was attempting to kill off all of Buffy’s friends- remember how he almost got Willow and Xander in the school?- so the only thing that would have saved her would have been if she’d never been friends with Giles, and by extention, Buffy. Merely associating with the slayer was her death warrent.
Mmmmm…perhaps. But Ms C. wasn’t really that close to Buffy, and only marginally a “Scooby”. Angel was, as you said yourself, more interested in Buffy’s closer friends, like Willow and Xander. But he skipped over them to go right after Jenny as soon as Dru clued him in on what she was trying. It was this that made her a specific target.
It’s possible she would have been killed anyway if it hadn’t been for this, but I think it more likely that Angel would have instead killed or seriously hurt one of Buffy’s really close friends, which in turn would have driven Buffy to finally stake him, which you will recall she couldn’t bring herself to do when he first lost his soul.
He would have killed her anyway, I think, if only because she was part of the group that could restore his soul. Knowing she was seeking it directly probably only stepped up the time scale. After all, they killed all the others in Sunnydale, didn’t they?
We’re getting kind of off-topic, but I wanted to say that Jenny’s death had plenty of meaning for Giles; have we all forgotten the elaborate set-up Angelus rigged in Giles’s apartment, and the look of absolute devastation on Giles’s face when he sees Jenny lying in his bed? And I know when I saw Angelus break Jenny’s neck for the first time, I was shocked even though I knew it was coming. It was so fast, brutal, and callous, that it made me so afraid for what Angelus would do to the rest of the gang.
Look, Tara’s death had meaning, and so did Joyce’s, if viewed from the perspective of those who loved them. But the issue is that Joyce, Jenny, and Tara died for nothing, IMO. That Joyce was a single mom, that Jenny was a gypsy, and that Tara was a lesbian had nothing to do with anything whatsoever as far as their deaths were concerned.
It is, of course, a matter of some speculation whether the writers and Joss have some other motive for the treatment of these (and other) specific characters. Perhaps they do, in fact, have some other motivations. Clearly there is a strong tone that sex=bad period running throughout the show, as Buffy has never had a sexual relationship that didn’t involve something bad happening. Of course, apart from Buffy, I think that Giles & his girlfriend and Tara & Willow were the only ones to actually have sex, at least that we know about (well, Oz in his wolf state and that other werewolf girl; oh, and Joyce and Giles, too hehehe). And Buffy and Oz were the only ones who had bad things happen to them because of sex. Remember the frat-house-party ep where Riley and Buffy were all over each other and the whole house was taken over by repressed sexuality? Angel’s turning, of course. And we have that one guy from season 4 who totally used her (even if he did get his in “Beer Bad” later on). And Spike isn’t exactly a healthy relationship for her.
Why am I ambling on about this? Ah, yes, ulterior motives. Well, anyway, I suppose I cannot disagree with what people get out of the show, as I don’t expect them to tell me what I get out of it. So in that regard, I am sorry that there is a segment of the Buffy Fandom which has been let down by the writers in their estimation. I can’t, and won’t, argue that feeling.
I just don’t see it myself.
Minor nitpick…
Uh, Oz and Willow most definitely did it. Remember when Oz said he was “panicking”? Xander and Anya screw like bunnies, even though she’s afraid of them, and in Hush, Giles’s woman (Olivia?) comes to town and they pretty obviously make the beast with two backs. Come to think of it, it may have been Olivia that you were talking about. Well, then, I don’t remember, did Giles and Ms. Calendar get it on?
Anyway, as to the topic at hand, I continue to maintain that Tara had to die to make the storyline tragic. All this hoopla reminds me of something that Neil Gaiman had to deal with after his storyline in Sandman: A Game of You. In that series, there was exactly one preoperative transsexual (Not so much preoperative as nonoperative, since she was scared of surgery), and she was the only major character to take a dirtnap as a result of the story. Does this mean that Gaiman was somehow making a political statement about transsexuals? Of course not. It was only through her death that the redership could be the most affected. Same thing with Tara. Joyce and Jenny died and it was shocking, yeah, but Tara was the first significant death of a character that was the same age (roughly) as the gang. Her death was easily the most affecting for me, at least, since I am about that age, too. Anyway, I dunno, I see what the articles are saying, but I really think we’re making a mountain out of a molehill here. Of course, I’m a straight white male, so what do I know?
I did mention Giles and his girl, but I don’t recall the Willow/Oz lovemaking. Was it mentioned only in passing? Eh, I didn’t care for Oz much, though he did have some awesome lines. Just didn’t like Willow with him… didn’t seem right. Willow was much better with Tara. I don’t recall Giles and Jenny doing anything other than make it painfully obvious to each other that they wanted to do something.
:smack: How could I forget Xander and Anya? Sheesh. But there’s another on the pile of relationships go bad forever and ever amen.
One more to tack in – Xander and Faith. He’d never been “up with people,” remember?
I have already posted my opinions on this topic, but I’ve realised now that this needs clarifying. ‘A lot of lesbians’ is vague to point of offense; I hate to play this comparison card, but would you say ‘a lot of black people’ without qualifying the statement?
Is it really true that ‘anyone’ must have noticed this? You are telling people what they have observed, not asking them about it.
Do you know for a fact that the people who have spoken out against this plotline are lesbians? Some of the people who posted here and said they understand the POV aren’t lesbians, and often those who take up a cause most enthusiastically aren’t actually in the cause themselves.
I am a lesbian Buffy fan who knows, in real life, at least thirty other lesbian Buffy fans, (that is, that’s about how many have discussed the show with me personally), and online an extra twenty or so. That’s a fairly large, representative grouping (especially since it includes those invisible fans who don’t get into online fandom). We aren’t going all gung-ho about Tara’s death, and I pointed that out early in the thread. So do we not count because we can’t be ranted against? There are extremists in any social grouping, but it is wrong to act as if the whole group is the same as the extremists!
In Band Candy, they had sex on top of the hood of a police car twice when they were under the candy’s influence. We find out in Earshot, when Buffy reads that in Joyce’s mind.
That was Giles and Joyce, Protesilaus. We’re never told whether he and Jenny got it on. I lean toward “not,” which is why he was so happy when he thought she was waiting in his bed.
I think we are making the reasoning error of “After, therefore because of” in this thread. Yes, the Scoobies have trouble, but they don’t have trouble every time they have sex. Not all sex is followed by trouble that is caused by the sex, even indirectly. As was pointed out earlier, Oz and Willow had sex with no repercussions. As did Giles and Joyce, Giles and Olivia, Anya and Xander, and many others.
I don’t think Tara died because she’s a lesbian, I think she died to make plain one of the truths of the buffyverse: Guns Are Bad. And, Tara was just too good and sweet to live. Characters like that have no reason for existence except to hold secrets and die.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by MrVisible *
**…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…. **
[/QUOTE]
I so wish I could deny this, but the only exception I can think of is the gay couple in Best of Show.
:smack:
Oops. I reallly read that wrong. Okay, to make up for that, I’ll mention Buffy and Spike repeatedly this past season, as well as Anya and Spike in Entropy.
Joss Whedon speaks:
Personally, Tara was an okay character, and her death was out of the blue and violent, the way death in the Slayerverse should be. And it finally – FINALLY – gave us the Big Bad for the season.
Here’s hoping that next season one of the characters, at the very least, is allowed to smile.
O, that’s unfair.
Anaya was smiling up untill the end of Hell’s Bells, her happiness in her “take care of my heart” speech was really quite charming. Spike’s been smiling, or at least smirking in a happy way. Dawn was happy out with those boys on Halloween, as well as when she thought Tara was coming back…ya know, now that I’m thinking about it: it’s happiness not sex that leads to disaster in the Buffyverse.