The Feminist Filter: Beauty and the Beasts

[gabrielleabelle]

Hey, so my hiatus is still on, for the most part. However, I already had the feminist filter for Beauty and the Beasts and Homecoming completed before said hiatus, so I'm gonna go ahead and post them over the next couple days.

Cheers!

Mission Statement:This series is intended to outline the feminist text of each episode so as to provoke and

Comments

[norwie2010]

Like your last post - i really want to come back to this one. I hope i'll get the chance.

(Just one thing now: When Pete describes Ken's earring, i think this is also a slander towards gay people - he's not coming around because he's gay. Puppet = gay, not masculine enough "real" boys don't play with Barbie + Ken...)

[gabrielleabelle]

The posts will be here whenever you get the chance. :)

(Definitely. I meant to mention that, but it looks like I forgot. So much in this episode!)

[samsom]

You know I'm less than confident with writing from a feminist POV, but when feral Angel appears in the doorway at exactly the right moment to 'save' Buffy from the Pete!Beast, I thought it kind of reinforced the notion that Angel's brand of beast is different - that he can be saved by the Love of a Good Woman, thereby negating the message of the episode (with Debbie's eventual death at the hands of her loving boyfriend).

Kind of dangerous, I think.

[gabrielleabelle]

Hmmm. I can see that. But at the same time, what Angel does there is similar to what Pete was doing - "protecting" Debbie by killing men who he felt threatened her (and him). Is killing someone else okay if it's done to protect someone else? The very act is something pretty masculine, with men protecting their women and somesuch.

I'm gonna have to think on that. Huh.

[samsom]

The very act is something pretty masculine, with men protecting their women and somesuch.

This too. It was pretty anvilicious with the music and the sudden and quick close up of Angel in the doorway, appearing to save his woman. I think this is what the straight reading was. And as Mcjulie says below, it might also be to prevent Buffy from killing someone who was too close to being human - similiar to Gunn killing Fred's professor a few years later.

Under that though, to me, was the demonstration that even though Angel (without his soul) did all the things to Buffy that Pete did to Debbie - the emotional abuse, blaming her for his monstrousness, killing the people around her - Angel the abusive boyfriend is different and worth saving because his love for Buffy restored his humanity in hell, as Giles noted earlier with "it would take someone of extraordinary will and character to survive that and retain any semblence of self". In making Angel the noble animal (with the reading of Call of the Wild while Buffy watches over him) it

[angearia]

Yeah, I think it's maybe showing how Angel's Protector facade can be its own form of oppression. It falls in line with the warning to watch out for the ~nice ones. Oh no, Angel's being nice again. Now he's REALLY dangerous to Buffy.

When he was a monster, she could potentially move on, right. If he was lost, she could move on. But now he's redeemable, she feels she has to commit to helping him redeem himself because she sent him to hell, 100 years of torture, and she slept with him and so he lost his soul. So much responsibility for his beastliness, she takes it all on, the way Debbie takes on Pete's rages. "It's my fault."

[amazing_grace93]

On the subject of Buffy's victim blaming, I can't help wondering if she's in sort of a no-win situation. Obviously, it isn't Debbie's fault; Pete is the monster here. I suppose when Debbie is putting make-up over her black eye, symbolically she's covering up the abuse in her relationship. So I guess if you're being generous, you can interpret Buffy's "Don't get hit" line to really mean

[gabrielleabelle]

*nods*

Also, Buffy was pressed for time. She knew Pete was killing people, and she wanted to stop him before he'd kill someone else. She didn't have the time to deal with Debbie in any sort of productive way.

So, yeah, it's kinda off-putting to see how Buffy treats Debbie, but it makes sense for her character.

It's interesting that Buffy now overidentifies with the victim of violence, when back in IOHEFY, she identified with the perpetrator. I wonder when this change occurred - maybe at the end of IOHEFY? Or did she always have the potential to see things from both perspectives?

Oh, interesting point! I hadn't thought of that.

[amazing_grace93]

Also, Buffy was pressed for time. She knew Pete was killing people, and she wanted to stop him before he'd kill someone else. She didn't have the time to deal with Debbie in any sort of productive way.

Oh yes. I think if she'd had the time, if nobody else had been in danger, she'd probably have dealt with Debbie differently. It's probably a big part of why she gets frustrated, because not only is Pete endangering Debbie, he's endangering other people (and in several cases, killing them). And Debbie's covering for her boyfriend and blaming the whole thing on herself - "It's not his fault...it's me. I make him crazy". Which is something Pete has obviously taught her to do, but yeah, I can see why Buffy might get annoyed.

[boot_the_grime]

It's interesting that Buffy now overidentifies with the victim of violence, when back in IOHEFY, she identified with the perpetrator. I wonder when this change occurred - maybe at the end of IOHEFY? Or did she always have the potential to see things from both perspectives?The latter, I think. The twist in IOHEFY works so well because, for half of the episode at least, everyone is assuming that Buffy = Grace and Angel = James, until Buffy gives that speech where she's clearly angry and harsh with James because she identifies with him. And there's a lot more going on there subtextually, even if the characters don't recognize the things that complicate the story into more than a straight-up "abuser/victim" story, namely that James was a teenager and Grace was an older person in a position of authority who wouldn't have just been shunned by the people of her time, nowadays she'd at least lose her job if not go to jail (depending on what James' age was). But nobody remarks on that... just like they don't remark on Buffy's age and the age

[mcjulie]

I've always been less than thrilled with this episode. It feels like a cheesy after-school special from the 70s, complete with well-meaning but completely outdated gender themes, delivered with a sledgehammer.

The scene where Faith explains the episode's theme to Buffy particularly irritates me -- they are FEMALE and they have SUPERPOWERS that allow them to BEAT THE HELL OUT OF MONSTERS. The whole men = beasts thing doesn't make any sense at all in that context.

Also, if men = beasts, what do women equal? Civilized human beings? Delicate flowers? Bunnies? I don't even know.

Which makes me think, if you gender-reverse the Debbie/Pete roles, it becomes a lot more interesting.

[boot_the_grime]

The scene where Faith explains the episode's theme to Buffy particularly irritates me -- they are FEMALE and they have SUPERPOWERS that allow them to BEAT THE HELL OUT OF MONSTERS. The whole men = beasts thing doesn't make any sense at all in that context.

It's something that FAITH says. I don't know why you think it's supposed to be the take-away message of the episode or that she's being the mouthpiece for the writer. Faith represents one point of view - which Buffy and Willow disagree on - and which makes sense for her characterization. I don't tend to assume that any character is supposed to be the unambiguous voice of wisdom in the show - and even if I did, Faith is one of the last people I'd expect to be that. Few people think we’re supposed to take everything comes out of her mouth as gospel truth when, for instance, in Consequences - also written by Marti Noxon - she says that Slayers are betters than everyone and should be above the law. Faith come from an abusive background; we know that had bad experiences with men (which

[kikimay]

I loved the fact that, at the end of this episode, we saw a kind of reversion in the main theme. We saw Angel (the beast), even in his feral state, protecting and recognizing Buffy, while Pete (who's supposed to be the man) turns himself into a killer. Maybe it's the feral part of human being that makes him act in a cruel way, but we saw Angel as a beast who's not cruel - just scared and, maybe, hungry - and Pete who's moved by hate since the beginning of the episode. So, who's more cruel: the man or the beast?