Buffy Comment and Project Runway Stuff

[shipperx]

Buffy

Still reading the comments to Barb's excellent analysis of Buffy's victim mentality in Season 6. One thing I see in the responses is the explanation that Buffy was depressed. I agree, she was. However, I don't believe that it absolves her of her free will or responsibilty for her own decisions. And I think it's entirely wrong to say she conceded any power over her life to anyone else. She might like to pretend to herself ("he took me over") that she did. But she didn't. And even unto Season 7 she never admitted that to herself and that's really one of my primary sticking points with her. That she was depressed is understandable. That it excuses her behavior is not. (I also don't believe that depression adequately covers her actions. She was depressed but her actions had a lot of other issues attached to it. It wasn't just depression. Then I read people say that Buffy was traumatised and that's why the depression makes sense (and it does). But, again, it's not an adequate answer for her behavior, nor does it mean that she was not behaving solely under her own power and thus is wholly culpable for her own actions in every, single, solitary way.


The truth is, I just sort of step back and ask... would any of the on-screen heroines I actually ADMIRE have reacted the way that Buffy reacted? Would Aeryn Sun ever in a million years claim that someone else made her do something? Would she ever say that she was powerless? Would Scully ever claim that she didn't make her own choices? Would she cast herself as victim? Surely both Aeryn and Scully count as female characters who had every right to talk about hard, cruel, unfair lives. They both had truly horrific things done to them. But the reason that I have great affection for those two fictional heroines and contempt for "iconic" Buffy is that Aeryn and Scully were women who stood on their own feet -- good, bad, or indifferent. They refused to play victim. They refused to blame-shift. That's why they are heroines in my estimation, and Buffy was ultimately just a brittle little girl with superstrength and a temper.

Sigh. Still have Buffy issues. Thanks, Marti. Thanks, Joss. Why does this character press so many of my buttons? I really need to figure that out.


Project Runway
Damn it! Project Runway's Wendy still wasn't eliminated. She's the only one of the designers who treats this like a reality show rather than a great opportunity to impress industry people. (Did read today that some designer was so impressed with Jay's work that he's been given space in her showroom). But Wendy plays mindgames and whines. It's really annoying. Why hasn't she been eliminated already?

And, hee! Jay was the most interesting part of the show tonight (since they were designing new Post Office uniforms it wasn't going to be their designs which were intersting.) I had to laugh out loud when his model was a no-show and when asked what he was going to do, he decided to dress Austin up and send Austin out as his model. And his comment, "Thank god Austin didn't look like a drag queen." ROFL!

(And Austin gets a head-pat for his equally funny observation of Wendy saying that they'll probably find her "wandering around in bad make-up and orthepedic shoes." Heh.)

Other Jay Jems of the night:

"Rob is a dog. A monkey-dog. Rob is a horny monkey-dog" at Rob leafing through the Victoria Secret catalogs as they delivered the mail.

And then, when Wendy wasn't eliminated (to her face) "You're like a cockroach!" (she laughs). "No! You're like a cockroach," he repeated. It would have been cruel if it hadn't been so, so true... and if it hadn't been what everyone else was also thinking.

Comments

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm in complete agreement with you about Buffy. I guess the issue is how flawed you are happy for a heroine to be before you can't like or admire her or respect her. No-one wants her to be a perfectly-adjusted little sweetie-pie. How much dark side is your heroine allowed? The dilemma for me is that I can't totally write Buffy off -- it makes Spike look pretty stupid for loving her so desperately if I do. Yet her repressions, her flaws, her failings, her denial, anger me and depress me. In the end I think she was failed by the writers -- their confused agendas and confused morality made then write her in a way that made no sense. I could accept it if their intention in season 7 was to show how her life as the Slayer had damaged her emotionally (which could have been portrayed by the First haunting her, in a purely psychological way, with her own demons). But that's not what they showed.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Maybe not so much how much they are flawed but in what ways they are flawed. In certain respects one could argue that Aeryn is in fact more flawed than Buffy. Aeryn got her lover killed because she wanted a promotion. Aeryn assassinated/murdered an innocent being (Moya's first pilot), and she had a soul and everything. And certainly she could be repressed, prickly, and difficult.

It's funny that in the end it's a handful of scenes that can make you love or loathe a character. I see Aeryn commit what are arguably worse crimes and yet forgive them because she cops to them. When the tape surfaces of her murdering the pilot, you can see that it hurts her. But she flat out admits "It was me. I did it. There's no excuse. And I can't undo it." And then she goes to confront the current Pilot saying that she can't change the past but she can give him someone to vent his rage upon.

So, her crime? Worse. But her response is so much better than Buffy's. It's simple, straightforward, and honest. I did it. It was terrible. I know that. I'm sorry, but I can't change it. What's so frustrating and annoying about Buffy is she simply doesn't have those moments of stark honesty with herself, much less others. Buffy might admit to a bad thing but then immediately follows it with an excuse about how it's circumstance or someone else's fault, or you can't blame her she's -- sniffle-- had a really hard life.

I can forgive characters truly horrendous actions...but I need to see them realize that they were horrible actions and that they committed them. That THEY did it. No one forced them to. I don't doubt that in Farscape's universe that Aeryn feels deep guilt for having sent her lover to his death so that she could get the life she wanted. I have no doubt that it haunts her. And yet I think Buffy never experienced a moment of guilt for Spike's demise. She would gloss it over, saying excuse "Oh, he wanted to go out a hero" without ever really thinking about how miserably she and her friends treated him so, so often. And that he truly had loved her. She'd say "oh, well, he died a hero" and go shoe shopping...because Buffy just slides by ugly self truths.

And if any woman could claim to be victimized it was Dana Scully. Kidnapped, violated, used. She never would have bargained for that when joining the FBI. And yet one of my favorite scenes is Scully, dying of cancer, deciding to go back to work or a later scene where she tells Mulder she'll confess to killing a man if it will get Mulder off because she's going to die anyway. If any woman had a right to self pity there, it's her. But Scully rises above it.

It's not that Buffy's mistakes are so unforgivable, it's that I find that the ways Buffy faces personal issues (as opposed to your general apocalypse) to lack character. I suppose that's why her "iconic" status frequently annoys me. Somehow a feminist icon should be someone I could admire more.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

I can't comment on Aeryn Sun, but a least Scully picked her profession. Buffy had no choice, and in a sense, she was a victim of that.

What Buffy failed to do was accept that and play the cards she was dealt without whining. I have never liked Buffy herself all that much (except in the film) and was one of the reasons I took to the show so late. And for that reason, for me she never had that far for her to fall in season 6 and is also the reason I can reasonably accept her now.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I try not to compare traumas between characters. I don't deny that the set-up for Buffy is a trying one. She had a harsh life. (However, I can't say that Buffy's calling is really significantly different from Aeryn having been born and raised to be nothing but a soldier.) Wat I find disappointing in Buffy is how she handles those traumas. If she was a real person, it wouldn't be fair to say she didn't handle her life well. She survived and that's all that one would expect. But she isn't a person. She's said to be a feminist icon. If she's supposed to be some image of feminism, I really dislike the form of feminism that she represents. Buffy may be able to beat the crap out of various villains, but the way she handles adversity and the way that she handles her personal flaws leave a great, great deal to be accepted. Buffy was neither emotionally honest nor emotionally brave.

Again, if she was a person, that would be one thing. It's the fact that she's a character and a character that we are told to admire (both by the show's writers and by articles calling her a feminist icon). I just don't much admire her because she's gifted with superpowers. I want her to have character that, unfortunately, she never developed.

It's not so much that she had flaws, but the way she dealt with those flaws. As an overall story arc, I was wholly dissatisfied with where she ended up.

I just wish that she could have had some of Scully's competence and value for integrity. And I wish she had a fraction of Aeryn's honesty. The point where I grew to love and respect Aeryn the most was the episode where it was revealed that she betrayed a lover to his death (he was executed because of her betrayal of him) and that she had participated in the execution of an innocent. These are horrific acts. She had been raised in a militaristic society. But when these acts were brought to light she didn't try to say that it was because of the society where she lived, she didn't excuse it as part of the life she had been born into. She made no effort to defend her actions. She said point blank "It was me. I did it. There's no excuse, and I can't take it back." I found that blunt reaction admirable. And I found her trying to overcome that, to become a better person admirable. Aeryn didn't blame-shift and she didn't make excuses and I admired that honesty in the character.

I just wish that Joss's feminist icon could be a feminine character to respect not one I'm supposed to pity and excuse.

[cy-girl.livejournal.com]

Joining you in the Scully love. She was flawed in her own ways but she always had integrity.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Scully might not have superpowers. But she held her own using strength, competence, intelligence, and integrity. She was a far better role model than Buffy could possibly be.

[jenjojen.livejournal.com]

Dude, Jay cracks my shit up. Everything he said last night, just priceless. And Austin the model? Hilarious. Wendy so needed to be eliminated, She annoys the hell out of me. So basically the point of this post is to agree with all the above statements.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Austin as model was completely hilarious. More hilarious was that he actually fit into the outfit designed for a model (that boy is excessively skinny). And Jay was hilarious from start to finish this week. Very witty.

Now, the question is, why isn't Wendy kicked out!

It's like that old Seaseme Street skit "one of these things is not like the others, one of these things isn't the same..."

Wendy clearly just doesn't have the talent of the other three. She just doesn't. Why is she still there?