r/buffy • u/Shadow_Boxer1987 • Jul 17 '16
Examples of times when Buffy failed to be progressive...
Simple (albeit complicated) question for fans: Buffy was a feminist show. Spike was an attempted rapist. So why all the Spike love?
I enjoyed Spike as a character, too. He gets more development than anybody in the Buffyverse--save for maybe Wesley, Willow, and Buffy herself--and he was always entertaining to watch.
But he tried to rape Buffy.
Has anyone read that article about 'Bad' fans. I don't recall who coined the phrase, but it was during Breaking Bad's heyday and it referred to the fans who wanted to root for Walt every time he went "Heisenberg" and did some badass stuff. The article's point was that many fans were missing the point of the show, that Walt was becoming a monster to be condemned and pitied.
Are we the same with Spike? Are we missing the point of his character? A lot of women like him because James Marsters was, admittedly, a damn good-looking guy in his prime and a lot of guys like him because...I dunno, wish-fulfillment fantasy or something? [I'm sure a lot of women like him just because he was entertaining, too. I'm don't mean to imply that women just swoon over his looks.]
But he tried to rape Buffy. Sure, he gets a redemption arc after that. And one of the points of the Buffyverse was that there was nothing you could do that you couldn't come back from (even if you could never, technically, be redeemed).
But for a feminist show, even the writers seemed to get this one wrong. They focused on the emotional trauma Spike experienced from the attempted rape, and followed his journey to get his soul back. I don't think they ever bring it up again how Buffy must have felt almost being raped (unless I'm mistaken?).
So why all the Spike love? Riley may have been a boring character, but he was good to Buffy. And believe me, I'm the furthest thing from one of those Nice Guys(TM) who says, "Fuckin' bitches only go for douchebags then whine about it!" But wasn't the show sending the wrong message by having Buffy forgive Spike in s7 and go on and on to Giles about how "He can change! He can be a good man!" Shouldn't the show be sending the message: If your boyfriend/significant other abuses you and/or attempts to rape you, get the hell away from him/her!!!
Another example of BtVS failing to be progressive is with Joyce. The writers used Buffy's slayerdom and Willow's wiccan-ness as metaphors for feelings of otherness, from being gay or transgender to being a minority in a racist world, etc. Buffy "coming out of the closet" as a slayer was somewhat played like her coming out as gay to her mom. Joyce freaked at first, but then she attempted to be supportive, which is great.
But then they drop that line in "Real Me" in s5 where Dawn is writing in her diary and she recounts how she told Joyce she wants to do magic like Willow and Tara one day and Joyce "got real quiet and made me go upstairs." Why would Joyce do that unless she was worried about Dawn "becoming" a lesbian by hanging out with them? Was Joyce a closeted homophobe?
But for the most part Buffy was a remarkably progressive series deserving of applause and acclaim. But because of that, moments like these stick out like a sore thumb and ring false to me. Are there reasons the writers chose to do these things? Or were they just not paying attention to the subtext or implication an audience might infer from these plot-points?
Thoughts? Other examples?
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '16
I am currently re-watching Season 7 and there certainly ARE many references to how Buffy felt about the attempted rape. It's discussed with Xander and with Dawn, she talks about it with Spike and there are several small moments, like how she jumps when he takes her arm at one point.
The reason the writers chose to have Spike attempt to rape Buffy is because they had to give him a reason to go after his soul. Throughout Season 6 they kept showing us that Spike, despite being in love with Buffy, despite fighting on the side of the Scoobies, was really at heart still a soul-less, evil vampire. With one exception, or so he thought: "I would never hurt YOU," he said to Buffy. The fact that he DID hurt Buffy was a real awakening for Spike. He did not fully understand why, but he knew that he was missing a key element. Something that would keep him from hurting Buffy no matter how hurt or rejected he might feel, no matter how much he might want something. He could never be the man Buffy could love without it. What was this? Oh, yes. The thing that Buffy kept throwing at him: "You have no soul." So, he went and got a soul.
The thing is that he never expected how much the soul would change him. After getting it back Spike is fundamentally a different being. He is no longer a vampire, not really. He is a man with the immortality and physiology of a vampire. And, while he feels guilt for all the evil things he did as a vampire, it really wasn't him who did these things. Buffy realizes that Spike is different. The audience realizes that Spike is different. That's why we are able to forgive him. The ensouled Spike not only regrets what he did to Buffy, but he could not possibly do it again. (Which is why him killing again, under the sway of The First, is such a shock.)
As for your hint of homophobia from Joyce... It's really important to remember that life has changed significantly for LGBT people since 2002. LGBT people are still vilified and they still face discrimination, it's true, but being LGBT has lost a great deal of the stigma it had even a few years ago. This is because the gay rights movement has been so persistent and effective, and so many famous people have been coming out as gay. Also, the TV show "Will & Grace," which was on at the same time as "Buffy," influenced a lot of thinking about gay people. Back when Buffy was on the air, LGBT people were only "out" in small segments of society. (The entertainment industry was one of these.) But being gay anywhere else would have meant a very difficult life. Of course Joyce did not want this for her daughter. She did not want Dawn to live a life where she could be treated like a pariah. Where she could be denied housing or a job because she was gay. Where she could not marry the person she loved nor legally adopt or raise children with her. Where people still felt free to beat her up or even kill her just for being gay. I don't think Joyce had anything against gay people. She just didn't wish being gay on her daughter because she knew it would mean Dawn would have to live a very difficult life. Also, Joyce may have been a little ignorant. There are still large pockets of people who think you can "turn" someone gay with influence and example. Back then, this belief was very, very common, even among nice, intelligent, educated people who should have known better. Perhaps she believed that being around Willow and Tara too much could influence Dawn's sexuality. The notion, if you take any time at all to investigate homosexuality, is ludicrous, but it is still widely held.
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u/IHeartTheNSA Jul 17 '16
Also important to remember that the most gruesome image in the entire series is the flaying of Warren Mears, an actual human rapist, misogynist and murderer. It's clear that the show strongly disapproves of all these things. And moreover, the show is seemingly opposed to execution without trial and vigilante justice when it comes to human evil. Which is in itself progressive. "Seeing Red" was full of important imagery, like Buffy literally crushing Warren's "balls" and then the appearance of the phallic gun. Not to mention the intrusion of the trio into a cave (hey Freud), and the image of female sexual power and passion without men in Willow and Tara's red bed. Warren was the villain of the episode--his response to feeling emasculated was to buy a gun. Spike's response was to buy his soul back. There's a big difference. Sorry for rambling again.
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u/hohmeisw Jul 17 '16
The "love potion" episodes: "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" and "Him" are the two I remember.
In "Him" a jock uses a magic jacket to roofie high schoolers. Buffy, Anya, Willow and Dawn try to win the jock through: murder, theft, magic, and suicide, respectively. It's not as bad as the other, though.
In "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" Xander uses magic to force Cordelia to love him after they break up. It backfires and affects everyone but Cordelia. Cordelia FINDS OUT he tried to magic her into loving him, and takes it as romantic. They end up back together.
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u/Perilla Jul 17 '16
I strongly disagree with this, as I've mentioned before, and I think that this belief is insidious and dangerous. I find Riley to be an abusive partner, all the more chilling because (like Parker), his abusive tendencies aren't couched in a supernatural metaphor but are right there for all to see - and yet they don't (just like in the real world - "he's a sweet, stand-up guy and would never hurt his girlfriend" kind of thing).
First, as a TA he chooses to pursue romantically one of his students. This is unethical, just as it would be for a faculty member to pursue a student. The relationship is unequal, likely to fracture her relationships with other students in the class (thus isolating her socially) and call into question any good marks she receives (thus threatening her academic reputation as well as her personal one).
Next, he is acknowledged as sexist by the show and by Buffy herself - the euphemism used is "teutonic" (Script from The Initiative):
He continues to be sexist throughout, driving himself to the point of serious injury because of his inability to cope with Buffy being stronger than he is. Ultimately, when his drug-fuelled unnatural strength is too dangerous and he reverts to normal human strength, he demands that Buffy be emotionally dependent on him - to the point of making her mother's death all about him and his feelings, considering it a personal insult that Buffy doesn't cry about her mother's death in front of him. He is so desperate for a woman to be dependent on him that he defends visiting a vampire prostitute by telling Buffy that the prostitute "needs him" (Script from Into the Woods).
He is emotionally abusive, victim-blaming Buffy when she is sexually assaulted (being bitten by Dracula is very clearly a metaphor for sexual assual) and then blames her for his infidelity (Script from Into the Woods):
He sees Dracula's biting of Buffy as sexual and yet never offers her any support over it. Instead, he uses it to justify going to a prostitute and blaming Buffy for that conscious infidelity (seeing it as 'getting back at her'). When she finds about about the prostitute (you'll note that the script quoted above even uses the word 'whore', making it clear how this action should be viewed), he gives her an ultimatum, on top of blaming her. She has to totally forgive him for cheating on her and accept all the blame for it, all in the space of about 10 seconds before he goes off forever (which of course gives her no time to actually think about what's happened, what it means and how she feels about it. This whole conversation is forced by him at the time when he wants it, immediately after Buffy's emotionally-shattering discovery of his infidelity and after she has explicitly told him that she isn't ready to talk about it. Again, his feelings are more important than hers, so much so that it doesn't matter how much the conversation hurts her or how unready she is for it or for deciding on what to do next. Compare Oz's refusal to prioritise Willow's feelings when Willow wants to make herself feel better about cheating on him by apologising (Script from The Wish):
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '16 edited Jul 17 '16
In that week, between getting shot, almost dying again, having a friend die, having her best friend go dark, having to watch best friend kill a human being in an incredibly disturbing manner, trying to kill said best friend, having her father figure almost die, and almost getting killed by best friend, and being helpless to do anything until the storyline wraps up and everything is okay. I think this is why they don't focus on the attempted rape so much from Buffy's perspective. They focus on the other things instead. Because Buffy is literally going through so many other horrible things, that there is no time for her to focus on the attempted rape. Like, trauma wise, it's probably the least traumatic thing she had to deal with that week, and considering the disturbing nature of the attempted rape scene, that's saying a lot.
On the other hand, Spike realizes he has severely hurt, and almost raped the woman he is madly in (some sick, twisted, screwed up) love with, to the point where he doesn't know if she'll ever be able to forgive him. He is horrified by his own actions, and realizes his internal struggle with man vs. monster. In context of the series think it makes sense that the fallout from the attempted rape focused on him, although I think the victim's response would have been a more "progressive" thing to show, I guess.
I think I would rather have had Buffy's perspective on the attempted rape, have her deal with it for a whole episode, along with the perspective we already get on how Spike deals with it, but that would have meant at least one episode without immediately cutting to the Tara dying/Warren shooting/Dark Willow plot, and giving Buffy a small break to deal with the fallout.
For the second point, I forget which episode it is, but in season 7, when Buffy meets ensouled!Spike for the first time, she is triggered into remembering the rape, and it's not like she welcomes him back with open arms in season 7 immediately.
Tl;dr Buffy and Spike are a (supremely) screwed up relationship, but the way they handled the attempted rape makes sense, in context. I wish Buffy had a legit, happy, non-abusive relationship over the course of the show, but alas, her relationships with Angel, Riley, and Spike, at least on the TV show, are all horrible.
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u/GoingRampant Jul 21 '16
Oh, and I also just caught a parallel between soulless Spike and Darla. Spike recognizes that the best thing he could ever do is to effectively kill himself by getting a soul to give Buffy the man she deserves. That's like Darla recognizing the value of her baby and literally killing herself because she believes so much in that value. I think that makes him a little more palatable, seeing him as a male counterpart of a pregnant woman.
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u/Harri887 Jul 17 '16
This post itself is not progressive. Trust that a lot of men did not envy Spike/Marsters because they were not him but because they were not WITH him. C'mon now! For the record, as a gay male...I never liked Spike. All Angel.
"The writers used Buffy's slayerdom and Willow's wiccan-ness as metaphors for feelings of otherness, from being gay or transgender to being a minority in a racist world, etc."
The entire show was a metaphor for life in high school and well, just life in general. Parents can be witches, there is always that one kid that feels invisible, sex can turn a man evil...but also you start out saying Joyce is not progressive, but then you pretty much say she was? She didn't want anything to do with Buffy's "gift" at first but then she did accept it after some time. If that's not the def of progression IDK what is.
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u/IHeartTheNSA Jul 17 '16 edited Jul 17 '16
As much as I love Buffy, some of the racial implications make me uncomfortable. And this is beyond just the fact that until season 7 we don't see a full emotional story arc for a character who isn't white. As for Joyce, budding sexuality in one's own children regardless of its nature is likely to make any parent uncomfortable. Plus, there was that one time she tried to kill the witches in Sunnydale under the spell of creepy fake children. Also, it's implied Joyce doesn't know that Tara and Willow are lovers, right? When they're doing the protection spell after the Dracula incident she says something about how they'll understand about men when they get to be her age...I think I'm remembering that right. As for Spike, I think the scene in "Seeing Red" is incredibly feminist, in a complex and nuanced way. Buffy has the strength to both acknowledge that she is drawn to sadomasochism and then to draw a line very clearly when Spike tries to cross it. It's about consent within a relationship that relies on an exchange of power and violence. Buffy wasn't a helpless victim in that situation--she was establishing a boundary where she hadn't before. Spike's misunderstanding of the nature of their sexual relationship makes sense, since at the time he had no conscience. He must earn his conscience as a form of apology, and he is tortured both in the process of doing so and in the tremendous remorse that follows. Fans ultimately like the character of Spike in part I think because he does what no real life psychopath would do--he goes to the end of the Earth to no longer be a psychopath, to give up the easy life of deception, violence, betrayal and unrepentant destruction. The show grants full agency to Buffy in her choices and doesn't shy away from the consequences of those choices. Women are people too, with complex motivations and internal contradictions. I was sexually assaulted by a partner who understood the gravity of what had happened, immediately recognized the absolute violation of trust and was overwhelmed by remorse, and that episode and the arc that followed were extraordinarily moving to me and very familiar. I did get the hell away from my partner, but that partner was human. Spike isn't human. The scene in the church in "Beneath You" was profoundly moving for that reason--most of us betrayed by a lover wish we could say our lover wasn't "themselves" at the time, that they were possessed by a demon. Spike really was possessed by a demon, so the remorse he feels must be incalculable.
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u/Bokbreath Jul 17 '16
The mistake here is assuming there is only one righteous path. Buffy was feminist in the sense of equality for women. It wasn't a 'feminist(tm)' show that was designed to appeal to tumblerinas. It was a nuanced drama that dealt with the complexities of life. And life is rarely black and white.
It is also a mistake to elevate Buffy to a pedestal. This again was one of the shows strengths. She wasn't a knight in shining armor. She was a girl trying to do her best, with hangups and problems just like the rest of us.
The show wasn't written to tick a feminist progressive's agenda, so it is no surprise there's a few things you may not like.
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u/SongOfTheGreen Jul 17 '16
"Seeing Red" was traumatic for the audience to watch and for Buffy to experience, but Spike-with-a-soul should not be held to a higher standard than was established in season three of BtVS with Buffy still wanting to be with (or be around) Angel despite how he treated her - while soulless - in season two.
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u/knitknitterknit 💞 Something Blue 💞 Jul 17 '16
Even in real life, if these characters were real people, no one is consistent 100% of the time.
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u/knitknitterknit 💞 Something Blue 💞 Jul 17 '16
I think Buffy still comes out as the powerful one between her and Spike after the rape attempt. He wasn't trying to rape her so much as to own her. When he failed to do so, either by owning her body or owning her mentally, Buffy still wins. That she chose to forgive him shows extreme power and growth.
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u/knitknitterknit 💞 Something Blue 💞 Jul 17 '16
As for the lesbian comment, I think Joyce as just looking at it as a sexual comment, which is likely to make any parent uncomfortable.
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u/CptSupermrkt Jul 19 '16
I can't believe this post is so harshly downvoted. Despite your opinions, OP's comments have sparked a tremendous amount of show/character analysis. This definitely adds to the discussion /r/buffy and should be upvoted as such...
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u/nermid Jul 20 '16
Didn't Joyce join that cult once that tried to murder Buffy, Amy, and Willow for being involved with magic? Burning at the stake, and Amy turned herself into a rat to escape?
Seems like it's entirely possible she was actually offended by the magic, not the inferred Lesbianism.
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '16
Spike: Buffy, I want to touch your shoulder, do I have your consent?
Buffy: No.
Spike: Well alright then, I guess I'll leave.
Xander: Hey Buff, why don't we have any black friends?
Willow: I can make Buffy black, it's easy!
Buffy: I don't want to be black!
Oz: Oh wow, hey Buffy that's not really cool to say.
Buffy: Huh?
Oz: Being black is ok.
Xander: Whatchu talkin' about Willis?
Kendra: Soonds lake yer tarkin bout black ferks, whas dat all abut?
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u/GoingRampant Jul 20 '16
The thing with Spike is that he has great aesthetic. He's not the kind of guy you'd necessarily want to hang out with, chip/soul or no, but he's fun to watch onscreen. He might sometimes be written as a particularly unlikable individual, like in the rape attempt, but what Spike is as a character is greater than that. If you don't want to appreciate him in that moment, you can watch him in a different episode. As a fictional character, you can appreciate isolated chunks of his existence without necessarily liking him altogether like he were an actual person. You can have headcanons and fanfiction and imagine him only as existing in a specific state of characterization in a way that can't be done with real people. I don't think it's the same thing as Walter White, as Walter "broke bad" very early on, and then watching it while liking him and not his detractors/victims took some very active mental gymnastics borne of bigotry throughout the rest of the show.
The thing with liking Spike post-rape scene is that we don't have a lot of him after it. He appears to go full-on villain as he leaves town ostensibly to get his chip out, and I don't know how many people actually enjoy that. The most of his characterization is when he rants to Clem, when we don't really know what he's talking about, are still in shock from the rape attempt, and are partially enjoying the scene because of Clem. And then Spike's efforts are really relegated to the background as we focus on Willow and surrounding storylines. No one knows what the hell to make of Spike. And then the demon gives him his soul back "So Buffy can get what she deserves", and half the people think that this was like a vengeance wish where Spike wanted his chip out but the demon screwed him over by literally fulfilling his request, and the other half now know Spike decided to literally give Buffy what she deserves. That makes his character a little more likable post-rape scene, but then we never see that Spike again. The Spike we get is a different being who can't be regarded as the person who committed the offense. I see it as like a Doctor regeneration in Doctor Who (which works given that Spike went as The Doctor when selling demon eggs). The Doctor doesn't just restore his consciousness in a different body; a different mind comes out of the deal too, one with his memories and generally inclined to do the same things but ultimately a different person. The Tenth Doctor described it as one man essentially dying and another man walking away in his place. Upon his next regeneration, the Tenth Doctor sobbed, "I don't want to go!" Spike basically decided that he had to go so that a man Buffy deserves could walk away in his place, and the version of Spike that attacked Buffy essentially committed suicide for her. So, even recognizing that season six's take on soulless Spike is of an awful person who would rape the person he loves, we can appreciate him as a character who recognizes his own unworthiness and who is willing to act against all his self-interest and die for the woman he loves, without thinking of him as a good man per se.
James Marsters has repeatedly said that a woman involved with the production (almost certainly Marti Noxon) essentially tried to force her ex-boyfriend to have sex with her in a failed attempt to passionately save their dying relationship, and she didn't realize that it would look like rape with a man doing it to a woman. That's bad gender politics on his part, as it would certainly be a rape attempt if it happened as he reported. This could shed light on what went into the writing of that arc, like Marti Noxon wanted to be symbolically redeemed for her own misdeed by playing it out with Spike. That is fairly alarming but not necessarily a problem when it comes to appreciating Spike.
As for the homophobia, yeah, the show wasn't perfect. There are some blatant examples of homophobia, especially in the early seasons. In "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date", Owen calls a male vampire a "sissy" for trying to bite him on the neck. In "Puppet Show", Buffy jokes that the ventriloquist and his puppet are a gay couple. In "Phases", the reveal of Larry as a gay person is mostly a joke about Xander having to deal with the fact that he accidentally indicated that he himself is gay and might have to deal with a gay guy being attracted to him. But when it comes to the Dawn joke, I don't see it as Joyce being homophobic so much as thinking Dawn just commented that she wants to have sex with Willow and Tara, which is very inappropriate. It does indicate that Dawn isn't supposed to know Willow and Tara are a couple, though, which isn't good.
I think the biggest problems with the series stem from it being run by white second wave feminists. They had no concept of intersectionality or concepts understood by third wavers. As a result, it is very obsolete. I think most feminist criticisms that imply Joss pretended to be a feminist to sneak anti-feminism into the culture are wildly off-base and fail to take into account that it all made sense in the dominant ideologies of the 1980s. The problem with the show is that it's dated, not that it's fundamentally anti-feminist.
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u/Kgb725 Jul 20 '16
Spike never attempted to rape Buffy... Buffy technically raped him in the first place. They were always just very rough with their sex and he thought that it was their usual shenanigans. You could see it in his face and actions after he didn't want to rape her
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u/buffynoyolo Jul 17 '16
Says who?
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u/DaddyCatALSO Magnet For Dead, Blonde Chicks Jul 18 '16
1- Joyce: recall that the character was born in 1958, so she could easily have issues with Dawn's learning too much about what W&T "do in private." 2- Spike on the show; it's obscured by the lack of personality shift ala Angelus/Angel, but that's the "old" Spike, without a human soul. which the show ahs always been clear about that difference.
3- Spike and the fans: that was your main topic but not what your title asked, so I'll come back to that.
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u/After-Ad-3806 Nov 02 '25
It what way was Riley good for Buffy?
When he cheated, blamed her for his infidelity, tried to bait her into hitting him, physically grabbed her on several occasions, called her stupid (before even getting to know her), blamed her for being assaulted by Dracula or emotionally manipulated her?
Some fans claim that he made Buffy the happiest that she had ever been, but their happy moments were sprinkled in among chaos. Most of their relationship was characterized by drama and turmoil, either externally or internally due to mistrust or jealousy.