I was sad to read that Joss Whedon was no longer going to write/direct Wonder Women. Not because I particularly care about Wonder Woman, in fact all I know about Wonder Women is her outfit, but because I’m enough of a fangirl that any Joss is good Joss (here’s hoping someone leaks the script on-line sometime soon - links welcome). Although what I actually want is for Joss to go back to television. I enjoyed Serenity, but I’d rather have had that story over a season of TV than a couple of hours of movie (and I think it probably would have cost about the same).

But Joss did an interview with MTV about the Buffy Season 8 Comic book, and I’ve officially become excited:

And speaking of Sunnydale, did anyone really think no one would ever notice if an entire town was destroyed? Now the army is involved, deeming Buffy’s squads terrorist cells. “They got power, they got resources and they got a hard-line ideology that does not jibe with American interests,” one general rants. So in addition to her regular crew of monsters and vamps, Buffy’s got a new battle coming her way.

Be still me heart - Buffy fights against the ‘war on terror’ - what could be better than that?

This post is a total geek-out; non-geeky readers will want to scroll on past this one. Later today, I’ll also post this week’s baby blogging (sorry for being late on it!).

Read the rest of this entry »

As fans of Buffy probably already know, from March next year ‘Season 8′ will run monthly in comic book form. Joss will write the first four, last four and some in between. I’m excited, really I am, I love Buffy beyond the telling of it.

But I’m just not sure I can be persuaded to love superhero comic books. I enjoyed Fray, it had Joss dialogue and great twists and turns. But the drawings of Fray and her sister depressed me - croptops, tiny waists, and breasts of steel.

Joss says the right things:

TVGuide.com: Does she get comic-book superheroine breast implants?

Whedon: She really doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never worked with a T&A artist. I’m very specific about that.

TVGuide.com: Isn’t that the raison d’etre of lots of comics?

Whedon: That’s part of why I stopped reading comics for a while. All the people I work with draw actual women.

But this is one of the sample pages from the Buffy comic provided with that very article:

I suppose there are possibly women who have a waist hip ratio of .66 (or whatever that figure has), but Buffy sure wasn’t one of them.

It seems a bit stupid to be complaining about the images of women in a comic book based on a TV series where Amber Benson was ‘the big one’. But at least with TV you are looking at an acutal women. When a TV actress loses weight she does lose weight all over. Comic book women are fantasies - and they’re male fantasies. I don’t want to look at images of women created to fulfil the desires of men. The endless images of women with exagerated hour-glass figures make it clear that women readers are peripheral to superhero comics. That the stories are not supposed to be for or about us.

I’m just not sure I could handle Buffy stories that said that to me.

Think of your favourite political movement, right now think of your favourite television executive producer.

See given the subject of this blog means that I’m guessing a fair number of people came up with feminism and Joss Whedon. Well guess what? You can combine the two in special fundraising screenings of Serenity for Equality Now. Go see if there’s one near you. You can also combine the two by watching Joss’s speech to Equality Now, where he answers the question he gets asked most often half a dozen different ways. Go watch it now (or if you’re on dial-up like me - start down-loading it) - I’ll wait.

I thought I’d honour these events by writing about the politics (OK I’m a geek and I have many different theories about the politics of Joss Whedon shows and I’ll go into them at a moments notice).

I think the politics of the television show are quite distinct from the politics of the movie. The movie says something - and we can argue about what that is, but it’s message is in the plot of the movie. The politics of the television show are less direct, they’re more about the world that was created, and less about the narrative of the individual episodes.

Live Free or Die

I first got involved with activism in university when I was 19. It was 1997 and the National government was looking to corporatise university education. A whole bunch of other people got involved with me - it was new and exciting. I was young, innocent and inexperienced. I remember having a conversation about politics with a Marxist, who seemed very grown-up to me, but now I think about it he was probably only 22. Anyway we were talking about our local social democractic party of the time the Alliance* social democracy and he said something like this:

In a way we agree with the National party - the country couldn’t afford free education and free health care, and all the rest of the Alliance’s policies [the Alliance was NZ’s social democratic party for a while there]. If the government introduced policies that radical then the capitalists would disinvest. Government’s have to run the country in the interests of capital.

Only he said it a little bit more annoyingly because he was a member of the International Bolshevik Tendency. Now I’m a little bit older now, and basically agree with what he said.

What does this have to do with Firefly? Well I think the politics of Firefly are a little bit like that - I think the Firefly can sustain either a libertarian or an anti-capitalist reading relatively easy - but I’m not sure the world they portray is particularly consistent with social democracy (or liberalism - if the term means much to you).

Now obviously I prefer the anti-capitalist reading, but I’ll go briefly into the libertarian reading, which I think is pretty self-explanatory. On Firefly the government is generally portrayed as the bad guy. The basic aim of the captain of the ship is to stay away from the government and stop them meddling in his life. I’m not at all surprised that libertarians can find the show appealling. I strongly suspect that Tim Minear leans towards libertarian politics, and that doesn’t surprise me (Tim Minear is the show-runner of Firefly who is not my secret tv boyfriend).

There are some serious problems with the libertarian reading - most importantly because no-one in the ‘verse takes private property particularly seriously.

The Materialist ‘verse

I think (and I don’t think this is particularly controversial) that the ‘verse is a capitalist one. I also think that capitalism doesn’t work for poor people in the ‘verse (just like it doesn’t work for poor people in the real world). We see people dying from work in the mines, because they’re not safe, we see the desperation of unemployment and we see capitalists using indentured labour owning a company town. These are real world problems, caused by real world capitalism. Joss set it up this way describing it as a world where there were laser guns, but not everyone could afford them.

This is more important than it should be. Most television denies any material reality for its characters. Grace Paley said that when you’re writing you should remember that all your characters have blood and money. For most TV characters money isn’t a reality, they have a bigger apartment and wardrobe than someone on their salary could ever afford, and whenever the writers get bored and decide to introduce a money based plot it is ridiculously unrealistic. On Firefly money, and class were real - they affected people’s lives and were the driving force in much of the plot.

This isn’t particularly radical (in the real world, it’s possibly quite radical on television). But I do think it makes an anti-capitalist reading consistent with the text. It’d be radical if it offered a solution, and it does - for a second - from Jaynestown (my favourite episode):

If the mudders are together on a thing, there’s too many of us to be put down…

It’s not quite a call to the barricades, but it’s a sign that at least some of the writers of Firefly live in the same world I do.

The Alliance

That’s the radical left reading and the radical right reading - it’s the social democrat reading that is most problematic. The Alliance, the government in the ‘verse, is not neutral - it maintains the power structures, and fights imperialist wars. Now this makes perfect sense to libertarians, because they believe that governments suck (although I’ve no idea what they think about imperialism, because litertarianism never made any sense to me - the only libertarian I’ve ever liked was Laura Ingalls Wilder). It makes sense to most left-wing radicals because we believe that the state tends to work in the interests of people with power, particularly the ruling class. It’s problematics for liberals and social democrats, because at best they have to believe that the state can be neutral.

Big Damn Movie

Serenity is slightly different. Not because the state is presented any more positively - poisoning people and creating unimaginable horrors is hardly neutral. In our comments someone described it as an ‘anarcho-libertarian’ - and I might agree, but I don’t consider that a compliment. The show has become about the small guys beating the big guys, not by building their strength through numbers, but by being smart and lucky. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t ring particularly true to me.

I prefer the indirect, realistic, politics of the show, to the straight-up, fantastic, politics of the movie. Give me Jaynestown over Serenity - I think I would have preferred Serenity if it had been told over a season - I think it would probably have been less fantastic that way (or maybe I just prefer TV to movies).

Also published on my blog.

I always enjoy Ampersand’s link threads, but when I see the word ‘Buffy’ I start making squeals of geeker joy (that’s supposed to be a quote from Ted, but it may not be accurate). So I was really interested in Emma’s Raping the Slayer, which analyses the portrayal of sexual violence on Buffy. The only thing more fun than watching Buffy is talking about your feminist analysis of Buffy (one day I might write a very long post about my theory on the portrayal of teenage girl’s sexuality on Buffy, but you’re spared that - for now). I disagreed with some of the smaller points she was making, for instance, I may being over-defensive on behalf of my secret-TV-Boyfriend, but I just don’t think this is true:

Joss has always been clear that he resents some feminist analyses of it, and what he sees as an imposition of subtext.

But generally I really liked her analysis, particularly when it came to Spike’s attempted rape of Buffy in Seeing Red, and the complete lack of follow-up in season 7. There were two things that most disturbed me about that plot-line, the first was that it was All About Spike. They wrote a rape plot that was all about the rapist and his quest for redemption, to the extent that the attempted rape had almost no affect on Buffy, and certainly none that was important to the plot.

The other was that getting a soul is a plot there is no real world equivalent for. This meant they could weasel out of the real world implications of what they were saying. While they were basically telling the story of a rapist who went away and came back a better person who could earn trust.

I like to believe that people can change, I’m not going to reject the possibility that once you’ve tried to rape someone there’s no chance of you becoming a person who values women’s autonomy. I wouldn’t necessarily reject a fictional story that tried to talk about that possibility. But no-one who ever tried to rape a friend of mine could be anything but a rapist to me. If Spike had wandered off somewhere else entirely and played out his story of redemption there (preferably somewhere that wasn’t on my TV screen), then maybe I could have stomached it. But the idea that you can achieve redemption and forgiveness from the person you tried to rape, is not a story I have any interest in.

That isn’t actually what I wanted to talk about. On the comments of Emma’s post someone brought up a planned Firefly episode, that I’d wanted to talk about for a while. The original source is here:

[Tim Minear, asked about eps of Firefly they didn’t get to make] hemmed and hawed and said, “Should I tell you this?… Oh well, what’s he going to do, fire me?” The original show was darker and this story was more in keeping with that tone.

It opens with Mal and Inara fighting (as they do). Mal tells her she pretends to be a lady and wants everyone to bow before her and kiss her hand but she’s just a whore. Then the Reavers attack and take Inara. While trying to get her back they learn that she had something that would make anyone who had sex with her die.

When they finally track down and board the ship they find all of the Reavers dead and Inara shaking and traumatized. They take her back to the ship and Zoe guards her room. Mal tries to get in to see her and Zoe tells him he’s the last person Inara needs to see. He pushes past her, kneels before Inara and kisses her hand.

I’d never heard of a plot like that before, so I didn’t have a feminist analysis at first, just a general feeling of disgust.

My most immediate feeling of repulsion was definitely at the execution of the idea. I have written about the Mal/Inara relationship before, and I’m not a fan, this just underscored all the reasons why. The most basic reason was that he did not respect the work that she did, and that seemed to me a really shitty basis for a relationship. This plotline seems to be about her earning his respect for what she does by using it to do something that he does respect (fighting). That she has to be violated and traumatised to earn his respect is so gross and repulsive, that I imagine I would never be able to watch the show again after seeing that episode. The fact that he ignores her wishes, underscores how little he actually cares about her.

But what I do find interesting is the wider question. What do other feminist think of a piece of flabotinum that means women can kill their rapists through having sex? It’s not something I’d ever come accross before (although for all I know it could be a common idea in some genre I’m unfamiliar with). One of the things it reminded me of was the rape condom - but as a fictional device I think it needs to be analysed completely differently. I was particularly uncomfortable that this idea came from two men. When men write about rape, I always wonder why. What are they getting from it? What are they trying to say? But I’m not convinced that a woman could write a feminist story about it either. Because ultimately it’s about suffering oppression in order to get revenge.

Also posted on my blog.

Just watched Pleasantville, a movie which for me is elevated above its extremely fluffy level by how much I enjoy the black-and-white mixed with color graphics. (The movie’s plot involves a black-and-white town which, object by object, turns color).

The last time I saw it, “Buffy” fanaticism hadn’t yet taken over my brain; this time, I recognized both Danny Strong (Jonathan from “Buffy”) and Marc Blucas (Riley from “Buffy”) playing background teens in Pleasantville. Danny Strong even gets a couple of lines. Geeky? Me?

Another thing I like about Pleasantville: It’s really unusual for a piece of American pop culture to embrace cubism as great art.

I saw Serenity at a preview months ago, liked it very much indeed thank you sir, although I didn’t think it was quite as good as the best of the TV show it was based on. Still, it was a hell of a lot of fun, and I’m hoping it does well.

Most of the reviews I’ve read are warm but not ecstatic. About half of them, like the Times‘ reviewer, compare Serenity favorably to the recent Star Wars trilogy:

It probably isn’t fair to Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” to say that this unassuming science-fiction adventure is superior in almost every respect to George Lucas’s aggressively more ambitious “Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.” But who cares about fair when there is fun to be had? Scene for scene, “Serenity” is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucas’s recent screen entertainments.

The only outright pan I’ve seen so far is USA Today: “Isn’t it asking for trouble to make a movie version of a TV flop?”

There are posters to look at, too. The German poster, featuring Summer Glau in an extremely skimpy dress, is as cheesy as a cheese shop during a cheese convention right after the cheese delivery (and where did she get that haircut? Late 80s Madonna meets Severus Snape). The American poster of Glau in the same dress but a cooler pose is only slightly better. After viewing those two atrocities, this other American poster - which I think is the main poster they’re using in the US - will hardly seem cheesy at all.

I honestly don’t remember if Serenity passes the Mo Movie Measure or not. I’m planning on seeing it again, I’ll report back when I have.

So was everyone who watched this past Wednesday’s Angel as irritated by the ending as I was?

Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun episode. And I like the basic idea of showing that Andrew has actually grown up a bit.

But what’s with the ending, in which the visual representation of Andrew’s growing up is that he’s going out for a night on the town with two gorgious babes (female variety)? The implication is that “growing up” consists of a movement from not-very-closeted homosexuality to the adolescant vision of heterosexuality represented by James Bond - and, in the sixth season of Buffy, represented by Warren.

As my housemate Charles ponted out, Andrew wasn’t overtly sexual with the two women; so the creators left themselves an “out” (as it were). Andrew hasn’t turned straight, and the point of the ending wasn’t to imply a three-way; he was just getting dressed up to go bar-hopping with two model-looking female friends of his. But that isn’t how most of the viewers will read the scene, and the creators of the show know that perfectly well.

Would it have killed them to show Andrew going out with a young man who seemed to treat Andrew decently? No, no - two hot blondes is much more mature.

* * *

In a completely unrelated rant, I just watched an episode of My So-Called Life. It was a pretty interesting episode; all the plotlines - even the English class reading The Metamorphosis - converged on being about girl’s and women’s insecurities about their appearances.

My favorite part was a scene in history class, which had no dialog aside from a video of a Malcolm X speech, which the class was watching. As the camera panned across the room (which seemed to have more black students than other classes in this episode) and settled on the main character, obsessing over a zit on her chin, Malcolm X’s speech said:

It was a very effective moment; what had been presented pretty much as personal hang-ups among the girls suddenly became politicized. Who taught these girls to hate the shape of their noses, the shape of their lips?

But then I got to thinking: Why is it that we can’t seem to get away from viewing the black civil rights struggle as the Platonic civil rights struggle, the struggle that all other struggles must resemble or else be illegitimate?

Think of the debate, in recent months, over if same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue. It’s almost always presented in the same way: as a question of if the gay rights movement is similar to or different from the black civil rights movement (those who are pro-SSM say “similar,” those who aren’t say “different”). It’s rarely presented as a question of if justice and equality are being denied to same-sex couples, taken on their own terms.

It’s like a perverse variation of the “model minority myth,” which is so often used to attack blacks (e.g., “if Jews and Asians made it despite discrimination, why can’t blacks?”). This time, it’s the “model civil rights movement” myth. We need to get over it.

• Kip at Long Story; Short Pier warms my geeky heart with the best geek-media news I’ve heard in a while: there will be a Firefly movie. If we’re lucky, the movie will be so successful that they’ll make a TV show out of it… Two good links from Kip’s post: An article about Firefly (the TV series) from a cinematography magazine, and Tim Minear’s description of the final days of shooting the TV show.

• Lawrence Solum’s blog has an absolute must-read post about the Democrats’ successful filibuster of Miguel Estrada. I don’t agree with Lawrence politically (in particular, it seems odd how he criticizes the democrats for putting ideology into the nomination process, but mostly ignores how the White House does the same thing), but who cares; his expert discussion of how Senate rules effected the strategy Democrats and Republicans took in the nomination fight is entertaining and educational.
• Julian Sanchez (of the excellent blog Julian’s Lounge) has a good article in Reason magazine explaining that yes, the Patriot Act is something to be frightened of. My favorite line: Lowry’s demand amounts to: “Show me just one classified, top-secret abuse of power!” As such, the request is disingenuous at the very least.
• It turns out I’m the 667,969,152nd richest person in the world - which means that I’m wealthier than 88.87% of humanity. Having that little factoid in the back of my head should make me feel guiltier the next time I whine about not being able to afford… well, anything. On the other hand, it blows enormous chunks in the theory that wealth follows merit, doesn’t it? (Seriously, I’m the laziest, least productive person I know.) Check out Global Rich List to find out where you stand. (Via The Fifty Minute Hour).
• Speaking of The Fifty Minute Hour, check out this post taking down Jonah Goldberg’s latest anti-gay-marriage rationalization. Nicely done.
• Julie Hilden - an novelist and attorney with a specialty in the first amendment - argues that anti-discrimination law should be expanded to cover the hiring of contract workers. So, for example, magazines like The New Yorker (which favor male writers overwhelmingly) might be subject to lawsuits.
• The Oregonian has an article up about a landmark I often stare at out of the bus window on my way home: the gigantic rotating loaf of bread (eight feet high and twenty-five feet long). Best fact about the giant loaf of bread: normally it rotates at a slow, stately 4.5 revolutions per minute. During storms, however, they turn the motor off and just let it whip around in the wind like a weathervane. (Via Aaron in Little Beirut).
• Grim Amusements points out that the recently-signed Prison Rape Elimination Act - whie a step in the right direction - is underfunded and toothless, and thus unlikely to do anyone much good. (Via Crooked Timber).
• Excellent Tapped post - mostly quoted from this David Greenberg article - explains why the press’s wish to appear “objective” makes big, important lies easier for politicians to get away with, while genuinely trivial questions (such as John Kerry allowing folks to assume that he’s Irish) are covered enthusiastically.
• If you’re ever chased by zombies, go run back and forth in the alleyways for a while. It won’t save you in the long run, but it’ll let you survive a bit longer before your brains become a happy meal for zombies. At least, that’s the lesson I learned playing with this simulator. (Via Lumpley).
• I want to put up this link to the audio of the Democratic candidate’s debate, so if I feel like it later I can go listen to it. Haven’t bothered yet, though.
• Forget the ten commandments: the really interesting issue in Alabama is the attempt to raise taxes - especially taxes on the wealthy - in order to improve schools for poor kids. (Currently, Alabama’s tax system is incredibly regressive - poor families pay two or three times as high a percentage of their income into taxes as wealthy families do). What’s fascinating about this is that the movement is being spearheaded by conservative Christians, who are taking seriously Jesus’ instructions to bring justice to the poor and say Alabama’s current tax code is sinful. The American Prospect has a good article on the subject, and PBS has an interview with movement founder Susan Hamill. (Both links via Making Light). From the PBS interview:
  What I develop is that these principles are ironclad — that you can’t abuse the poor or your community is not godly; it’s something else. It’s based on Mammon, based on market values that only value money, based on values that are not Christian. If your community basically has an infrastructure where the child born poor has no chance, you are not consistent with the values in the Scripture.

  The tax referendum on September 9th will probably lose, but Professor Hamill says the fight will go on. Meanwhile, just because the strategy hasn’t worked in Alabama (yet) doesn’t mean it couldn’t work in other, less strongly anti-tax states… Progressives need to watch this carefully. Aligning our desire for social and economic justice with the Bible is one of the most hopeful - and ignored - strategies the left could be using.

• I’ve never read NewsSkim before. It aint’ all PC, but it made me laugh aloud more than a couple of times. (Via Crooked Timber.)
• Conceptual Guerilla has a good suggestion for the next time you hear a Republican deride “big goverment liberals”; start talking about “cheap labor conservatives.” That one concept - cheap labor - is all you need to keep in mind to understand all of right-wing ideology, or so Conceptual Guerilla argues. Check out “Defeat the Right in Three Minutes,” and also CG’s blog.
• Even in cases where DNA evidence proves that an innocent has been wrongly convicted, Prosecutors - whose egos, self-image or career prospects are on the line - often refuse to admit that they prosecuted an innocent person. This FindLaw article proposes that the original prosecutor of a case should not be the prosecutor who decides if the case can be re-opened; instead, independant committees within DAs offices should decide such cases. Seems like a good idea to me.
• Esquire magazine has put up a complete archive of all its covers since the magainze began in 1933. It’s kinda fascinating, watching how the magazine’s cover conventions change from decade to decade. (Via Scrubbles).

Rumour has it that the fabulous sci-fi flop Firefly may be headed for the big screen. Normally I wouldn’t bother reporting a rumour, but the primary source of this rumour is Nathan Fillion - who, as the star of Firefly, presumably has inside info.

At the least, we Firefly fans can look forward to the DVD, which will include the three episodes that were never broadcast.

In other news, before Buffy ended Bean and I had to record Gilmore Girls (also broadcast at 8pm Tuesdays) so we could watch both series. There’s a very slim connection between Buffy and Gilmore Girls - both series were created by former Roseanne writers (Roseanne being yet another favorite show of mine).

Now there’s another, more direct connection - according to janeespenson.com, Jane Espenson, one of the better Buffy writers, will be joining the Gilmore Girls staff, as a “consulting producer” for GG and a writer for the spin-off show.

I’ve finally gotten around to seeing Farscape - we borrowed season one on DVD from the library. Geez, does that show stink! I mean, it eventually got good (about two-thirds into the season), but it took a while. Still, the muppets were good, and so were several of the actors. And I’m told that season one is the weakest season.

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, gave USA Today a list of his ten favorite Buffy episodes. (Via Ms.Musings). Not bothering with false modesty, eight of the ten episodes he selected were written and directed by himself. (And rightly so - Whedon is by miles the best Buffy writer. Sometimes I wonder if the show wouldn’t have been better off as one of those BBC shows, with only 8 or 12 episodes a season, but all of them written by the series creator).

Anyhow, Joss’ list:

• Innocence (the one where Angel turns bad)
• Once More With Feeling (the musical)
• Hush (the silent episode)
• The Body (the episode dealing with Joyce’s death)
• Doppelgangland (evil vampire Willow)
• The Wish (Cordy wishes Buffy had never come to Sunnydale)
• Becoming, Part II (the season two ender, Buffy vs. Angel)
• Restless (the season four finale, featuring everyone’s dreams)
• Conversations with Dead People (like the title says)
• Prophecy Girl (the first season finale; Buffy vs. the Master).

All of these are good episodes, but not all of them would be on my personal “top ten” list. Speaking of which…

Read the rest of this entry »

Blueheron is pleased by Gunn’s interracial one-night stand on Angel:

As one of Blueheron’s readers points out in comments, Blueheron isn’t very aware of TV outside of fantasy and science fiction, or he’d know that interracial romances are now relatively common. In fact, there’s even been at least one instance of backlash: Eriq LaSalle, who played Dr. Benton on E.R., demanded that the show write a positive romance with a black woman for Dr. Benton. As LaSalle told Ebony:

I agree with Blueheron that it’s screwed up for Star Trek to insist on intra-racial couplings; in a universe where it’s seemingly common for humans to date Vulcans, Klingons, Changlings, and all the other races with funny ears and forehead ridges, it seems odd that the characters are so fussy about skin color. But I’m not so thrilled with Gunn’s multiple inter-racial romances on Angel; I can’t help but suspect that the reason he only has romances with white folks is that Gunn’s the show’s one and only non-white character.

Of course, if they brought in a black actress just to be Gunn’s love interest, that would be problematic as well… since it would be clear that they hired her only to give Gunn a black love interest.

There is a way around this, of course, which is to create minority characters all the time, incorporated into the universe. What if there were multiple characters of color on Angel, who appeared on the show in every single episode? What if, instead of being a show about a white guy, his five white assistants (one in green makeup), and his one black assistant, it was a show with seven lead actors, and several of them weren’t white?

I know, I know… that’s just crazy talk.

Via the Supergeek comes this PopPolitics “roundtable” discussion of the current (and final) season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All the participants are enjoying season seven (although one of them is, like myself, profoundly bored with the Spike/Buffy relationship), so those of you in the “Buffy sucks why don’t they do the good season three stuff anymore?” crowd might not enjoy it. But I really enjoyed it - one of the most intelligent discussions of the current season I’ve seen, but not so rigorous that I can’t enjoy it when I’m half-asleep (like right now). :-)

Anyway, here’s round one; here’s round two; and here’s round three, which came out shortly after it was announced that this is the final season of Buffy.

Having said that, I’m going to ignore the substance of their discussion, instead going off on my own tangent. In round two, one of the participants says “Riley was a nice jock who never had a hope in hell of really understanding Buffy.”

Riley? A nice jock?

Really?

I disagree. By the time the character left the show, Riley had become a misogynistic jerk (not that I’m complaining; Riley’s misogyny and general creepiness was the most interesting thing about his character). In a way, season-five Riley was where Buffy writers began seriously examining misogyny among ordinary men, a theme that continued with the character of Warren in season six.

Consider how Riley starts his vampire habit; not with prostitutes, but by picking up attractive female vampires at bars. With at least one female vampire, Sandy (and maybe more we didn’t see), he flirted with her at a bar, went someplace private, and then…

If his victims were human, we’d call Riley a serial killer.

Of course, she’s not human; she’s a vampire, demon, evil evil evil. But so what? Buffy’s behavior towards Spike in season six was wrong because cruelty, malice, and using other people without regard for what it does to them is inherently bad; and it is bad despite the fact that Spike the mass-murderer surely deserved all that suffering and worse.

Riley then switched over to prostitution, and the set design made it clear: Riley was not using happy, well-off callgirls a la Sam’s girlfriend in the first season of West Wing. He was exploiting what looked like the poorest, most miserable vampires imaginable; finding a “relationship” where he could pay a powerless woman to give him what he wanted, and all the while blaming it on his girlfriend for not opening up enough to him. To be attracted to that situation at all requires, I think, a fairly significant level of woman-hating.

I actually enjoyed this plotline - every character should have a dark side, and making the nice jock also a creepy misogynist certainly made the character more interesting. It was also compatable with what we had already seen of Riley’s character. Riley, after all, appears to be one of those guys who has no female friendships at all other than 1) his mother-figure and 2) his girlfriend. In general, guys who actually like women have some women friends who aren’t moms or lovers.

What bothered me is that some of season five’s writers - and in particular, Marti Noxon - seemed to take Riley’s side in the dispute: Buffy was in effect blamed for the end of the relationship and for Riley’s disgusting behavior. Remember, for instance, Xander’s speech to Buffy towards the end of “Into the Woods?“

But Riley has been holding back, in huge and significant ways (for instance, by not mentioning his habit of being sucked by vampires for pleasure). And insofar as Buffy has been unable to trust Riley entirely, that may simply show how sharp her instincts are.

Fortunately, Buffy also had some fairly impressive anti-misogynist episodes, such as “I Was Made to Love You” - a Jane Espenson scripted episode that, by ripping apart the “live for your boyfriend” ideology, played like a rebuttal to “Into the Woods.” (Unfortuately for my theory, Espenson seems to endorse the it’s-all-Buffy’s-fault interpretation in “Intervention,” but oh well.)

You all saw the final episode of Seinfeld, right? (I liked it better than most people did). You remember: Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer are in small-town Massachusetts, and they spot an exceptionally fat man being carjacked.

[Cut to shot of fat man being carjacked in front of the group.]

Robber: Alright fatso, out of the car.

[Cut to shot of group. Kramer aims his videocamera.]

Kramer: I want to capture this.

Robber: Come on! Gimme your wallet.

Victim: Don’t shoot.

Jerry: Well, there goes the money for the lipo.

Elaine: See, the great thing about robbing a fat guy is it’s an easy getaway. You know? They can’t really chase ya!

George: He’s actually doing him a favor. It’s less money for him to buy food.

That scene may have been the most unusual series of fat jokes in movies and TV in the last decade. Why? Because jokes were being made at exceptionally fat character’s expense, and an honest-to-god fat actor appeared on camera, playing the fat person. This goes against the usual fat-comedy strategies.

What are the strategies? Let’s categorize the Absent Fatsos:

The Invisible Fatso. Think of Karen’s husband on Will and Grace, or “Ugly Naked Guy” on Friends - both fat characters who return episode after episode to be the butt of fat jokes, without ever appearing on camera. (Ugly Naked Guy did appear on camera - from the back - once. Tellingly, that was the character’s final appearance on the show.)

For some reason, those same shows also use the Ex-Fatso; the character that was fat years before the show’s narrative began, but is now thin. Will on Will and Grace and Monica on Friends are both ex-fatsos, whose friends make fat jokes at their expense (Jack to Will: “Men don’t make passes at men with fat asses”).

Then there’s the Animated Fatso, of whom there are too many examples to recount; but surely the king of them all is Homer Simpson. I don’t think any TV show has ever told as many fat jokes as The Simpsons:

Doctor Hibbert: Homer, this is a new body fat analysis test. What we’re going to do is jiggle the fat and measure how long it takes to stop.
[long pause]
Homer: Woo hoo! Look at that blubber fly!!
Doctor Hibbert: [activating intercom] Nurse, cancel my one o’clock.

(Oddly enough, what most offends me about how the Simpsons portrays Homer is that they think he only weighs 240-260 pounds. In one Simpsons episode, the writers suggested - with no detectible irony - that at 300 pounds, Homer would be so crippled by fat he’d qualify for a disability program.)

And then there’s the most famous Absent Fatso strategy of all - the Fat Suit. This device has been used on Friends, in the “fat Monica” flashbacks and alternate-realities, and also in movies like the Austin Powers series and Shallow Hal.

It appears that in comedy, fat people can be made fun of in any way at all - as long as there aren’t any fat actors in the room. The reason is pretty obvious: mocking real fat actors would make audiences feel uncomfortable. Audiences want to laugh at fat people, without the discomfort of wondering if a real person’s feelings might be hurt. As Marisa Meltzer, in a brilliant Bitch Magazine article comparing fat suits to blackface, wrote:

With a real fat woman in the lead, the movie wouldn’t be funny - it would just be uncomfortable. Watching actual fat on the big screen would be so authentically painful - because fat hatred is still deeply entrenched in American culture - that audiences would be unable to laugh. It’s not just the exaggerated dimply thighs and man-boobs that keep us buying tickets; the crux of the joke is not the latex suit’s physical fakeness but the ephemeral nature of the thin actor posing as fat. We all know that Julia, Goldie, and Gwyneth (and Martin, Mike, and Eddie) will return to their slender glory for the next part, and that’s comforting - because otherwise we would have to confront the mean-spiritedness behind the giggles.

This, of course, is why the final episode of Sienfeld showed a real fat actor pretending to be mugged: the writer wanted to make the audience uncomfortable with the cruelty of the main characters’ jokes. Hence, for once, a real fat person.

Digression number one: The exceptions to the rule.

Pop culture is huge, and any generalization made about pop culture has its exceptions. Married with Children, for example, regularly included many fat actresses, whose generous curves were straight lines for Al Bundy’s jokes. This approach fit into the show’s “we’re delighted with our own crassness” shtick. Even so, the writers were careful to make sure the fat women scored some victory over Al at the end of the episode. The message seemed to be that Al might be mean-spirited towards fat women, but the writers and producers weren’t.

Another exception is the Drew Carey Show. This show relies on the “Jews are allowed to tell Jewish jokes” strategy; the fat jokes are mostly told by fat characters Drew and Mimi, at each other’s expense.

And of course, the show Ally McBeal was infamous for its pathological obsession with thinness and contempt for fat people; at least twice a season, a fat actor would be dragged onto the show for an episode of appearing pathetic and/or comedic. (Ally creator David Kelly was infamous for his unresolved issues about fatness and thinness).

Digression number two: The even more absent fatso

There’s an even more popular strategy for sparing audiences the sight of fat actors, show no fat characters, ever. In seven years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there have been virtually no speaking fat characters. One of the few exceptions was was a demon who embodied every fat-hating stereotype imaginable before he was electrocuted by the main character (the demon was, of course, played by a thin man in a fat suit).

In the absence of fat people (as with all appearance issues), Buffy is deeply conventional. Although we keep hearing about how fat Americans have become, you’d never know it by watching American dramas and sitcoms. Especially when it comes to fat women, most American TV shows pretend that fat women don’t exist (although there are a few honorable exceptions). According to a Michigan State University study (found via Big Fat Blog), 1 in 4 real-life American women are fat, compared to 1 in 33 television women. Also, “larger body types were more likely found among characters who were guests on the shows rather than recurring characters.” And, “larger characters were less likely to be [presented as] attractive.” And, “larger females were almost twice as often the object of humor.”.

Conclusion: Why does any of this matter? Because pop culture is a major way all of us - but especially kids - learn our cultural norms. And what pop culture teaches about fat people is that they are objects of contempt. The MSU study press release mentions that “Obese children and teens are more often excluded from peer groups, are discriminated against by adults, report psychological stress, and have a poor body image and low self esteem.” As the underlinked blog Fatshadow said in another context, “the fat kids of the world pay the price for our unwillingness to excise fat hatred.”

The Absent Fatso reflects a desire to avoid cruelty - the fat character who is there without really being there exists because mocking real people would seem too mean. But in fact, the cruelty is still there, and so are the real-life fat people; they’re just in the audience, rather than on screen. The Absent Fatso strategy doesn’t avoid cruelty so much as it makes it palatable. Watching “Ugly Naked Guy” cause revulsion on Friends, Homer tip the scales on Simpsons, or Mike Myers cavorting in a fat suit, the same message is delivered. “Get your yummy fat-hatred without having to think of fat people as real people!”

The following is part of a blogburst, a simultaneous, cross-linked posting of many blogs on a single theme. This blogburst concerns Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series, Angel. For a guide to other Buffy/Angel articles, go to The Buffy BlogBurst Index.

Here’s a confession: I can’t do good caricatures. But I’d like to learn. Here’s another confession: I get nothing done without a deadline. So when Meryl Yourish announced the Buffy BlogBurst, I thought, hey, a deadline! That’ll force me to work on caricatures! I emailed Meryl and told her I’d be doing something with caricatures of Buffy cast members.

Then I noodled around a little with pencil and paper.

Then I forgot about it.

Then came the reminder in my email. Deadline! Lovely deadline! Wellspring of all productivity!

In some ways, Buffy cast members are ideal for this. I know their faces well, which is necessary for me to judge if a likeness has that feeling of "oh, her!" But I haven’t seen many cartoons of Buffy characters. This is important, because most political cartoonists, when they draw (say) George Bush, aren’t really drawing Bush - they’re drawing a sort of unspoken cartoonist’s consensus of what cartoons of Bush look like. And we recognize Bush, not because the cartoons have any particular resemblance to Bush, but because they look like other cartoons of Bush we’ve seen.

The trouble is, it becomes hard for me to draw Bush my own way, because I can’t even figure out what my own way is. My imagination is poisoned by images of what other (often, much better) cartoonists have done with Bush.

The problem with drawing TV characters is that most actors have bland, pretty faces (as discussed in this post). Being "pretty," to a great extent, is dependent on having few or no outstanding features to caricature.

For some reason - maybe just because she’s my favorite character - I decided to draw Willow.

This was my first attempt. Drawn using this photo as reference. As I was working on it, a friend of mine - attempting to be kind, but not realizing who I was trying to draw - told me it was a "nice Hillary Clinton." Several of my other friends then agreed, a nice Hillary Clinton. Too late, it occurs to me that a big disadvantage of blogging caricatures is the high likelihood of embarassing myself with my incompetence. Oh, well.

Looking at it now, the big problem with it isn’t that the features are wrong , but that none of them scream "Willow." There are lots of pretty woman who smile and have round cheeks, after all.

Time to get some more photo reference. At first the photos I found weren’t very helpful; eventually I realized that this was because most photos are of Alyson Hannigan, but what I needed was photos of Willow. (A photo like this, for instance, just emphasizes the way Alyson Hannigan looks the same as other pretty woman - and bears no resemblance to Willow). After wasting too much time clicking through publicity photos, I run across the solution - "screencaps," still images from the TV show itself. A little googling turned up the wonderful Alyson Hannigan Corner, where some blessedly obsessed AH fan has gathered hundreds (thousands) of screencaps of Willow.

Here’s my second try (not include a half-dozen false starts). Deciding that a more detailed drawing style might help - I’m a big fan of David Levine’s work - I had done some careful work on the features. Too bad she ended up looking like a troll. Worse, although some of the features are right, overall the drawing has nothing of Willow’s personality in it.

On the bright side, I was getting a better idea (in my mind, if not on paper) of what Willow’s nose looked like. And I realized that I needed to draw a hairstyle which emphasized Hannigan’s distinctive widow’s peak.

I spent a while just looking at screencaps and doodling. I decide that I need to emphasize how baby-faced Willow is (that’s why Hannigan seems so adorable-looking; despite being thin as a rail, she has a very round face).

Try number three (not counting many aborted attempts), and (to my eyes, anyway) the first successful drawing. About damn time! I don’t think David Levine has anything to fear from me, but at least this seems to capture some of Willow’s personality, as well as being a decent likeness.

Here, if you’re curious, is the photo I looked at the most while drawing this.

Of course, because I think it’s good right now doesn’t mean a thing; maybe in a week I’ll look at this with fresh eyes and realize how at one with the suckage it is. For now, though, I do a quick coloring job (I can’t decide if the colors help or hurt the drawing) and - forgetting all about putting it online - go to sleep.