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thoughts on truth & responsibility in art, or, why i dislike xander harris but think he's necessary
So Mark, he of the Mark Watches blog, is now watching Buffy straight through and posting his thoughts as he goes. This has stirred up a lot of feelings in the remnants of BtVS fandom, and we’ve already talked at length about the depth of his analysis (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) and whether or not we think it’s weird that he’s making money off of basically just posting his emotional responses to a show (for the record, my thoughts are: yes, it’s weird, but I’d probably do the same thing if I had the option, so I can’t really blame him). But I wanted to talk about something I’ve seen mentioned a couple of times in passing in discussions about other aspects of his analysis, because it’s been on my mind a lot.
I can’t remember which post it was (please feel free to link me to it if you remember what I’m talking about), but someone mentioned that you almost have to watch the show in its historical context the way you would read a book written three centuries ago or something like that. Because social justice-y ways of watching the shows were not at all prominent ways of approaching these texts back then (15 years ago, more or less, which: crazy).
For instance. Someone mentioned that people nowadays have a much stronger reaction to Xander than most people did when watching the show originally. Specifically, this person mentioned the subject of slut-shaming and pointed out that the word "slut-shaming" was not in the common fan's lexicon at that point. Obviously the act of slut-shaming existed, has always existed, but the vocabulary for talking about it wasn't as accessible to most people in fandom as it is now. [Note: This doesn’t mean that people didn’t react to the shows the same way people do now—I know for a fact that the reactions to Tara’s death and to “Lies My Parents Told Me” were very profound and coming from the same place that they might now, and I imagine there were viewers who recoiled from Xander’s sexism in ways that are identical to the way someone watching today might. But the vocabulary to talk about them weren’t as prominent then, or at least not nearly as widespread. People have always approached texts with their own experiences and baggage in mind, but the idea of the average viewer as opposed to an academic approaching this show and watching it from a social justice point of view was not nearly as common as it is now. Now we kind of expect most people in fandom to at least know what we mean when we talk about these things--though we're often proven wrong, that assumption is made. People wouldn't have been as likely to assume that then.]
Now look. I will admit freely that I do not like Xander most of the time (he does have his moments). But. A great part of my fury at his character is the fact that I know guys just like him. It really is almost breathtaking the way that the writers created a character who so embodies this particular kind of guy, a kind I knew quite a lot of in high school. And I dislike Xander because he reminds me so, so much of these guys. That’s actually fantastic writing. The verisimilitude of this characterization actually blows my mind. And guess what? These guys are the kind to slut-shame. These guys are the kind of guys who hang around a girl they have a crush on hoping that he’ll be able to wear her down enough that she’ll settle for him. These guys are really, really judgmental towards women and our behavior. And I actually really appreciate that Joss and the other writers explore a character like this. The point of art is to tell the truth, and the truth is: these guys exist, and while they can be really great friends and people in some areas, they do a lot of terrible things that can feel like a punch in the gut or spitting in the face to those of us who they’ve judged or otherwise hurt. Having your own experience be recognized by art can be a powerful thing.
On the other hand, seeing that kind of behavior acted out again on a show we’re watching for entertainment when we already have to deal with in real life…that can be rough. And obviously the guys who act like this are products of a society that tells them that it’s okay to act like this. And part of that societal instruction comes from TV shows they watch to be entertained. So there’s sort of a cycle going on here.
So the question then becomes: how do you portray these facts of life and human behavior without that portrayal propagating that very behavior? We obviously can’t have our characters acting like paragons of virtue all the time (though it sometimes seems to me that some people do in fact want the characters to always behave in the correct way regarding *isms, even if they don’t care that the characters are going out and killing people or whatever. That…does not seem realistic to me personally. *isms are a huuuge part of life, and any art that is truthful has to recognize that). That would be boring, and worse, it would be untruthful. Even our heroes need to do and say things that are flat-out wrong.
But it’s easy to have Willow try to destroy the world or, more mundanely, have Willow and Xander cheat on Oz and Cordelia and have audiences know that this behavior is not at all okay. We know because it’s societally supported, because we see how much it hurts the victims (poor Oz and Cordy!), because most of us find it easy to imagine what it would be like to be the victims of this behavior (no, I do not want to do! No, I do not want to be cheated on! Obviously!). But the *isms we talk about are so, so much more insidious, aren’t they? Society at large slut-shames, so unless we’ve experienced this ourselves or have been aware of these things, mostly via education, we won’t necessarily see that behavior and immediately think, “Bad.” Moreover, most men and a lot of women aren’t used to identifying with a character who’s being slut-shamed (I know that before I got into the whole feminism thing, I certainly wasn’t. I have about as little sexual experience as it’s possible to have, and no one had ever slut-shamed me because no one has anything to slut-shame me about--not that they always need the excuse, because sometimes they don’t. So it was entirely outside the realm of my experience, and so I didn’t notice it as hurtful). So when we have someone like Warren, his misogyny is easily coded as bad because…he’s the bad guy and also because it’s extreme enough to be noticeable and repugnant to most people (he literally turns Katrina into his slave! Most decent people are going to realize how NOT OKAY that is). But how do you portray a “good” guy like Xander being incredibly sexist and not portray that as okay? Does the writer have to resort to heavy-handed preaching?
The line between these things is blurry. None of us like being preached at. But at the same time, sometimes just portraying the opposite behavior (for instance, Xander really doesn’t seem to have a problem most of the time with the idea that Buffy is in charge and is very much stronger than he is, which is a good thing) isn’t enough. It can be so, so hard, and I have sympathy for writers trying to accomplish it, because (HELLO READER RESPONSE THEORY I LOVE YOU) different members of the audience are going to react to things in completely different ways. I look at something like Dollhouse. Most people will admit that Joss was trying to critique rape culture. However, a lot of us think that he didn’t do a good job of it—that his personal squicky kinks and not-so-stellar writing (plus a lack of time to develop the stories) got in the way to the point where he mostly ended up actually perpetuating the rape culture he was initially trying to critique. Uh-oh. Not so good. But then I know other people (hello, Poco!) who think he did a great job critiquing it and find it really powerful and effective, and I think that’s an entirely legitimate response to the text.
And then, some members of your audience are just going to be horrible people. I mean, GRRM doesn’t hate on Cersei or Sansa, but goodness gracious fandom sure does (see also: Bennett, Bonnie; Summers, Dawn; et al. And writers cannot control their audiences’ reactions to their texts, as much as they may want to. When they try you end up having Samuel Richardson writing over a million words of Clarissa because people kept reading the text wrong. But no matter how many words he wrote, they kept reading it the way he didn’t want them to. Must have been frustrating, but that’s the nature of art—it doesn’t exist in any one form, it has as many forms as there are readers or viewers or listeners—a new and unique piece of art is created each time a person reads of watches or otherwise experiences that art. And that’s the joy of art, but it can also be frustrating for us as artists who want to communicate a certain thing.
[eta]: I actually forgot to say that I don't think that on the whole the BtVS writers did a good job showing Xander's behavior as problematic in the first half of the show. They do a better job later. But I still think he's a realistic and even necessary kind of character, even though they could have done a MUCH BETTER JOB in questioning a lot of his behavior within the context of the show.
So how do you do it? Well, it’s always good to have other characters call out the bad behavior. And to present the opposite behavior in a good light. It feels like a cop-out to just say “try really hard and do better next time,” but sometimes I think that’s the best advice. I think if you’re actively trying to not portray as acceptable behavior you know is wrong, most of the time you’ll pull it off. And if you don’t, you apologize and try again.
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eowyn_315 pointed out something else I forgot to say originally, which is that being aware of your own privilege is hugely important in this whole endeavor. A big part of my problem with Joss and his sexism comes, I believe, from his failure to examine his own privilege. We see this in Xander's depiction, in Dollhouse, etc. So you not only have to try really hard, but you also have to see yourself clearly. That's key, and I hate that I forgot to say it.
Does anyone else have any advice on this topic? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about the last couple of days, and sometimes it can feel like, “Oh, look, here’s another thing I have to worry about as a writer.” But I do think it’s important, so I appreciate any thoughts at all you might want to share.
And I am sure I’m leaving out something I meant to say, so don’t be surprised if this post is edited to add stuff in the future. My mind does not at all work in a linear fashion, so I usually end up leaving things out.
I can’t remember which post it was (please feel free to link me to it if you remember what I’m talking about), but someone mentioned that you almost have to watch the show in its historical context the way you would read a book written three centuries ago or something like that. Because social justice-y ways of watching the shows were not at all prominent ways of approaching these texts back then (15 years ago, more or less, which: crazy).
For instance. Someone mentioned that people nowadays have a much stronger reaction to Xander than most people did when watching the show originally. Specifically, this person mentioned the subject of slut-shaming and pointed out that the word "slut-shaming" was not in the common fan's lexicon at that point. Obviously the act of slut-shaming existed, has always existed, but the vocabulary for talking about it wasn't as accessible to most people in fandom as it is now. [Note: This doesn’t mean that people didn’t react to the shows the same way people do now—I know for a fact that the reactions to Tara’s death and to “Lies My Parents Told Me” were very profound and coming from the same place that they might now, and I imagine there were viewers who recoiled from Xander’s sexism in ways that are identical to the way someone watching today might. But the vocabulary to talk about them weren’t as prominent then, or at least not nearly as widespread. People have always approached texts with their own experiences and baggage in mind, but the idea of the average viewer as opposed to an academic approaching this show and watching it from a social justice point of view was not nearly as common as it is now. Now we kind of expect most people in fandom to at least know what we mean when we talk about these things--though we're often proven wrong, that assumption is made. People wouldn't have been as likely to assume that then.]
Now look. I will admit freely that I do not like Xander most of the time (he does have his moments). But. A great part of my fury at his character is the fact that I know guys just like him. It really is almost breathtaking the way that the writers created a character who so embodies this particular kind of guy, a kind I knew quite a lot of in high school. And I dislike Xander because he reminds me so, so much of these guys. That’s actually fantastic writing. The verisimilitude of this characterization actually blows my mind. And guess what? These guys are the kind to slut-shame. These guys are the kind of guys who hang around a girl they have a crush on hoping that he’ll be able to wear her down enough that she’ll settle for him. These guys are really, really judgmental towards women and our behavior. And I actually really appreciate that Joss and the other writers explore a character like this. The point of art is to tell the truth, and the truth is: these guys exist, and while they can be really great friends and people in some areas, they do a lot of terrible things that can feel like a punch in the gut or spitting in the face to those of us who they’ve judged or otherwise hurt. Having your own experience be recognized by art can be a powerful thing.
On the other hand, seeing that kind of behavior acted out again on a show we’re watching for entertainment when we already have to deal with in real life…that can be rough. And obviously the guys who act like this are products of a society that tells them that it’s okay to act like this. And part of that societal instruction comes from TV shows they watch to be entertained. So there’s sort of a cycle going on here.
So the question then becomes: how do you portray these facts of life and human behavior without that portrayal propagating that very behavior? We obviously can’t have our characters acting like paragons of virtue all the time (though it sometimes seems to me that some people do in fact want the characters to always behave in the correct way regarding *isms, even if they don’t care that the characters are going out and killing people or whatever. That…does not seem realistic to me personally. *isms are a huuuge part of life, and any art that is truthful has to recognize that). That would be boring, and worse, it would be untruthful. Even our heroes need to do and say things that are flat-out wrong.
But it’s easy to have Willow try to destroy the world or, more mundanely, have Willow and Xander cheat on Oz and Cordelia and have audiences know that this behavior is not at all okay. We know because it’s societally supported, because we see how much it hurts the victims (poor Oz and Cordy!), because most of us find it easy to imagine what it would be like to be the victims of this behavior (no, I do not want to do! No, I do not want to be cheated on! Obviously!). But the *isms we talk about are so, so much more insidious, aren’t they? Society at large slut-shames, so unless we’ve experienced this ourselves or have been aware of these things, mostly via education, we won’t necessarily see that behavior and immediately think, “Bad.” Moreover, most men and a lot of women aren’t used to identifying with a character who’s being slut-shamed (I know that before I got into the whole feminism thing, I certainly wasn’t. I have about as little sexual experience as it’s possible to have, and no one had ever slut-shamed me because no one has anything to slut-shame me about--not that they always need the excuse, because sometimes they don’t. So it was entirely outside the realm of my experience, and so I didn’t notice it as hurtful). So when we have someone like Warren, his misogyny is easily coded as bad because…he’s the bad guy and also because it’s extreme enough to be noticeable and repugnant to most people (he literally turns Katrina into his slave! Most decent people are going to realize how NOT OKAY that is). But how do you portray a “good” guy like Xander being incredibly sexist and not portray that as okay? Does the writer have to resort to heavy-handed preaching?
The line between these things is blurry. None of us like being preached at. But at the same time, sometimes just portraying the opposite behavior (for instance, Xander really doesn’t seem to have a problem most of the time with the idea that Buffy is in charge and is very much stronger than he is, which is a good thing) isn’t enough. It can be so, so hard, and I have sympathy for writers trying to accomplish it, because (HELLO READER RESPONSE THEORY I LOVE YOU) different members of the audience are going to react to things in completely different ways. I look at something like Dollhouse. Most people will admit that Joss was trying to critique rape culture. However, a lot of us think that he didn’t do a good job of it—that his personal squicky kinks and not-so-stellar writing (plus a lack of time to develop the stories) got in the way to the point where he mostly ended up actually perpetuating the rape culture he was initially trying to critique. Uh-oh. Not so good. But then I know other people (hello, Poco!) who think he did a great job critiquing it and find it really powerful and effective, and I think that’s an entirely legitimate response to the text.
And then, some members of your audience are just going to be horrible people. I mean, GRRM doesn’t hate on Cersei or Sansa, but goodness gracious fandom sure does (see also: Bennett, Bonnie; Summers, Dawn; et al. And writers cannot control their audiences’ reactions to their texts, as much as they may want to. When they try you end up having Samuel Richardson writing over a million words of Clarissa because people kept reading the text wrong. But no matter how many words he wrote, they kept reading it the way he didn’t want them to. Must have been frustrating, but that’s the nature of art—it doesn’t exist in any one form, it has as many forms as there are readers or viewers or listeners—a new and unique piece of art is created each time a person reads of watches or otherwise experiences that art. And that’s the joy of art, but it can also be frustrating for us as artists who want to communicate a certain thing.
[eta]: I actually forgot to say that I don't think that on the whole the BtVS writers did a good job showing Xander's behavior as problematic in the first half of the show. They do a better job later. But I still think he's a realistic and even necessary kind of character, even though they could have done a MUCH BETTER JOB in questioning a lot of his behavior within the context of the show.
So how do you do it? Well, it’s always good to have other characters call out the bad behavior. And to present the opposite behavior in a good light. It feels like a cop-out to just say “try really hard and do better next time,” but sometimes I think that’s the best advice. I think if you’re actively trying to not portray as acceptable behavior you know is wrong, most of the time you’ll pull it off. And if you don’t, you apologize and try again.
[eta:]
eowyn_315 pointed out something else I forgot to say originally, which is that being aware of your own privilege is hugely important in this whole endeavor. A big part of my problem with Joss and his sexism comes, I believe, from his failure to examine his own privilege. We see this in Xander's depiction, in Dollhouse, etc. So you not only have to try really hard, but you also have to see yourself clearly. That's key, and I hate that I forgot to say it.Does anyone else have any advice on this topic? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about the last couple of days, and sometimes it can feel like, “Oh, look, here’s another thing I have to worry about as a writer.” But I do think it’s important, so I appreciate any thoughts at all you might want to share.
And I am sure I’m leaving out something I meant to say, so don’t be surprised if this post is edited to add stuff in the future. My mind does not at all work in a linear fashion, so I usually end up leaving things out.
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