I agree that Buffy's complete ineffectiveness at fighting back was startlingly inconsistent with how her fighting abilities and strength had been portrayed up to that point. When I managed to revisit the ep from a much more detached POV, as opposed to the first time I saw it which triggered some shit for me, that was one of the things that really stood out.
This, however, is why I can't deal with post-S6 Spuffy. I'm all for redemption themes and such, but I can't suspend disbelief enough to buy that somehow they go from there to any sort of romantic relationship. Which I realize is at least in part about my own issues and triggers, and is all tangled up with rage over the "falling in love with your (would-be, in this case) rapist" trope. However, as I've noted before, this is very much a minority view in Buffydom, as Spuffy does seem to be the dominant ship.
I was only tangentially in the fandom when "Seeing Red" aired, but I do remember the huge storm of anger that erupted over Tara's death. My initial reaction before seeing other fans' response was just to be sad that a character I loved, who had finally appeared in the opening credits, leading me to believe she was finally a firm part of the team, was gone. That was, in fact, one of the things that I saw people freak out over, some in the same way I had and some with a much more profound sense of betrayal by this. I quickly gathered that many young lesbian fans, in particular, were in a place of feeling deeply betrayed by the fact that not only had this much-loved character been killed off, but also that there was that setup at the start of the ep that gave a false sense of, "Oh, good, she's definitely here to stay." While that may have had more to do with giving Amber Benson a full credit before she left the show, it is something that had been done before deliberately (with Jesse in the very first episode), though not with an established character. I like to think that if Whedon and whomever else was involved with that decision had realized just how deeply personally some would take that bait-and-switch, they might have handled it differently, but of course, we'll never know.
The other thing that came up a lot was the trope of the "crazy, evil, or dead lesbian," in particular that the pattern in popular media of making a lesbian character lose her mind or get killed as soon as it's become clear she's actually having sex with her lover. It's not a pattern I'd recognized before or even heard of, but that was the theme of a lot of the enraged meta. Not that it was homophobic to break Willow/Tara, because as you point out, all the couples were broken one way or another by this point, so they were hardly singled out. But that the way it was done was perpetuating that stereotype. I'm ashamed to have to admit that all these years later, I still don't really have enough lesbian popular culture under my belt to speak to that myself, but I imagine that's a meta discussion that it would have been very interesting to hear you weigh in on at the time. I haven't the foggiest if I can even find any of it to point you to now however, though I think I'll poke around a bit this afternoon to try.
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Date: 2010-06-01 03:42 pm (UTC)This, however, is why I can't deal with post-S6 Spuffy. I'm all for redemption themes and such, but I can't suspend disbelief enough to buy that somehow they go from there to any sort of romantic relationship. Which I realize is at least in part about my own issues and triggers, and is all tangled up with rage over the "falling in love with your (would-be, in this case) rapist" trope. However, as I've noted before, this is very much a minority view in Buffydom, as Spuffy does seem to be the dominant ship.
I was only tangentially in the fandom when "Seeing Red" aired, but I do remember the huge storm of anger that erupted over Tara's death. My initial reaction before seeing other fans' response was just to be sad that a character I loved, who had finally appeared in the opening credits, leading me to believe she was finally a firm part of the team, was gone. That was, in fact, one of the things that I saw people freak out over, some in the same way I had and some with a much more profound sense of betrayal by this. I quickly gathered that many young lesbian fans, in particular, were in a place of feeling deeply betrayed by the fact that not only had this much-loved character been killed off, but also that there was that setup at the start of the ep that gave a false sense of, "Oh, good, she's definitely here to stay." While that may have had more to do with giving Amber Benson a full credit before she left the show, it is something that had been done before deliberately (with Jesse in the very first episode), though not with an established character. I like to think that if Whedon and whomever else was involved with that decision had realized just how deeply personally some would take that bait-and-switch, they might have handled it differently, but of course, we'll never know.
The other thing that came up a lot was the trope of the "crazy, evil, or dead lesbian," in particular that the pattern in popular media of making a lesbian character lose her mind or get killed as soon as it's become clear she's actually having sex with her lover. It's not a pattern I'd recognized before or even heard of, but that was the theme of a lot of the enraged meta. Not that it was homophobic to break Willow/Tara, because as you point out, all the couples were broken one way or another by this point, so they were hardly singled out. But that the way it was done was perpetuating that stereotype. I'm ashamed to have to admit that all these years later, I still don't really have enough lesbian popular culture under my belt to speak to that myself, but I imagine that's a meta discussion that it would have been very interesting to hear you weigh in on at the time. I haven't the foggiest if I can even find any of it to point you to now however, though I think I'll poke around a bit this afternoon to try.