An Actual Fantastic Discussion on Race and The Vampire Diaries...
If you know me at all, you'll know that this is a subject that rests very close to my heart and weighs upon it every single time there is an episode of this show. This article is really great and I have so many complicated feelings on the matter and I thought I'd share it here if anyone's interested. There are some points I find problematic and
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Bonnie is given no one and her strength is taken for granted. She asks for help when she needs it but leans on no shoulders and looks after herself. Why is it assumed that in a cast of characters including ancient and immortal beings, the lone black character can go it alone?
Klaus. Klaus' whole thing is that he doesn't want to be alone. He wants his family. Family is important. His goal/dream is to unite his family. He promises Elijah his family will be whole again. This guy is the biggest villain the show has had, and the producers chose to "ground" him through this trope, through their favorite trope. And then there's Bonnie. It took 3 seasons to give her a mother, and we can only pray the story will play out coherently and well. And that's only number 1. Because there's still number 2 which is her dead family that is actually still around in the witch house. They've covered all of Klaus' angles so much that we're going to get "internal struggle" among the Original family.
All the vampires have allies. Bonnie, on the other hand, consistently acts as an ally while having none of her own.
THIS! No further commentary needed because it's true.
Regardless of race, I have to imagine that this would be hard on any teenager, and it’s a strange choice to not address the toll it takes on her.
And this! I feel like more than half the time the show writes it like Bonnie is at home with these vampires and Elena while Kat plays it like she isn't (because we know she gets the character). Only rarely do the two views match up.
Like you, there are parts I downright disagree with. I'm not going to name them all, so I'll just say this to encompass it all: they give the show "credit where credit is due," but that's only in relation to the White characters, the plot (of the White characters), etc, while writing it as if Bonnie and the Black witches and even their positions as servants of nature are complete fails and completely problematic. And I don't think that's true. It also seems like they don't watch the show, or the Bonnie/witches parts that closely, and I'm talking about them wondering why the witches would work for the vampires. We know why. We just don't know how it happens. That's the problematic part. That the show ignores the perspective of the trapped witches and basically only shows the "getting out" part.
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But yes to all this.
We have talked before about the problematic Strong Black Woman shit this show persists in pulling with Bonnie and I think it encompasses this too. Bonnie is a strong character but she doesn't get lauded the way the others do for being "strong". Bonnie nearly takes down a millenium-old vampire and that feat is only given cursory acknowledgment by both the show and the fandom alike. It doesn't help, obviously, that the show failed to give us much PoV on the toll that kind of a spell took on her and are thus perpetuating this idea that she's a mindless machine who just gets things DONE, DONE, DONE because that's what slaves do. But I just - the fandom then reinforcing that bullshit and taking it to heart, and choosing to disregard Bonnie and the things she does entirely - that shit gets to me. It gets to me a lot.
We need look no further than Klaus to see the show's priorities when it comes to storytelling time and care. He is a white, male character - and they are pouring all of their resources into telling HIS story. And it's egregious when a character who has been there for three seasons gets less development and less everything than this dude whose been here for less than twenty episodes. Egregious.
I mean, there's an extent to which Bonnie's isolation works into my understanding of her as a character. And I think it's an important character point. But the fact that they killed off her one ally (Grams), have yet to introduce her father, took her cousin away so quickly you could've blinked and missed her, and are ONLY introducing her mother now says a lot about how these writers approach her.
That was my big problem and it comes into play in too many critiques about racism on the show. People then tend to go to the other extreme by claiming that there is nothing of worth in Bonnie, that she's not even a character, that she's worthless etc. etc. I have never had any desire to see Book!Bonnie on this show and never will. I appreciate so much of who Bonnie on the show is and not because I'm an irrational stan but because I think there's a lot of internal consistency to her and there are so many layers to work with -- if only the writers felt the same.
What we need to understand more of is what does it mean to be a "servant of nature"? They've hinted at it but they're not quite there yet because it's not in their best interests to allow Bonnie to have motivations that are entirely her own. And that's fine but I'd like more exploration into her own issues with things. They've done it in the past in season 1, and moments in season 2 - we know Bonnie wants to keep people safe, we know a lot of things but they need to delve deeper.
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It does, but most of the time it feels like she's isolated even from the freaking writers.
Yeah, the book Bonnie thing boggled my mind. The girl is a simpleton. She was even more subservient to Elena than show Bonnie. I had to leave a comment when someone said the show screwed so much that Bonnie was even willing to die for Elena. She wasn't. They also wondered who Bonnie lives with since she visits her dad and his family in the summer. It's not her dad that she visits. Stuff like that. And I c/p most of what I wrote on tumblr onto the comment.
Yes, I need to hear the witches, Bonnie and Abby, non-Bennett witches explicitly state what it means to them. Because it's obvious that what it means to Bonnie is NOT what it meant to Gloria and Greta.
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