"All men are beasts, Buffy."
This is an extraordinary, if upsetting piece of television, and so well-judged in the little details. But before I get to the whole subtext of domestic abuse, I should probably say something about sexual politics. If you were to ask me, a man, if I was a feminist, I'd probably respond that there are several different feminisms, and it depends which one you mean. If you were then to tell me to stop being a smartarse and just answer the bleeding question, I'd say yes.
I've deliberately not sought out any other responses to the episode online; I always try to avoid doing that until after I finish my own blog post on the episode in question. But I'm wondering what the reaction might be to the palpable "all men are bad" vibes, which I'm actually going to defend. One of my pet hates is men (and women) who lazily dismiss feminism as man-hating crap. This is something which I find extraordinarily ungracious. It's obvious that women still, even in the West today, are a long way from enjoying equal status, pay and dignity, and that domestic violence is overwhelmingly directed against women by men. A gentleman should not try to deny such things.
That isn't to say that I don't have problems with the depiction of gender roles here, because it's not just about Debbie and Pete. Women are consistently shown to be both stronger and more mature than men. Xander pointedly falls asleep almost immediately into his turn at guarding Oz, something which Willow, who is female, is too responsible to ever do. Both Oz and Scott are shown as emotionally awkward and lacking in strength. And then there's the quote up there at the top, from Faith. All these things are fine on their own, but in combination it's all looking a bit too "all men are the same". This is a problem not because it's derogatory to men; frankly, given the misogynistic depictions of women that appear everywhere and always have, we have nothing to complain about. But there is a problem in that it's a rather passive sort of message, which seems to reject that the gender roles in society can be changed and imply that, hey, men are just like that and there's nothing you can do. The problem here is that men are left with all the agency while women are in a very passive role.
But I think, given the domestic violence subtext, that we can excuse this. The Jekyll and Hyde fantasy elements are just a thin veneer; this is a textbook abusive relationship. Pete turns into a monster and becomes violent, but then suddenly becomes gentle and caring again. He still blames Debbie, though, saying that "You know you shouldn't make me mad". It reminds me very much of Dennis Waterman's recent twattish comments. And what's particularly striking is that it's her who ends up comforting him. It's the abused party, of course the woman, who's the strong one. Frailty, thy name is Man. He's controlling, and she goes out of her way to make excuses for him.
This is such a very, very important episode in terms of the messages it sends to teenage girls watching. They really, really need to know about the dangers of domestic abuse and, if it makes them more cautious around potentially abusive men, then a bit of the old "all men are bastards" message is the right thing to do.
Phew. Moving on… there's a second subtext, I think, centred on Buffy, about wildness versus civilisation. The opening and closing narration from Call of the Wild is a nice touch. Buffy is still struggling with her ongoing issues from the small matter of sending the man she loved to Hell, when suddenly, unbeknownst to all but herself, he's back, and apparently traumatised by centuries of unspeakable torture from a situation which, in hindsight, was rather cleverly foreshadowed in Anne.
Significantly, she doesn't feel she can tell any of her friends about this, not even Giles. The only person she feels the can talk to is the school's rather nice psychiatrist. And he gets killed, leaving her all alone to deal with her demon(s). This is clearly going to fester…
No comments:
Post a Comment