Years later, he has a little epiphany
The crypt scene in the BtVS episode "Villains" was extremely controversial in my corner of Buffy fandom. That being the Bronze and the various successor communities. I don't know for certain whether it was so among the general viewership, but my general sense is, not so much. What happens is basically this: In the previous episode called "Seeing Red", Spike the vampire, frustrated because of Buffy's rejection, attempts to rape her in her own house, and only desists when she kicks him off of her. It's a frankly shocking scene, and was reportedly upsetting to the actors as well as most viewers. He then flees the house. But later, when Buffy needs to find a way to keep her sister Dawn safe from Willow, who has gone on a dark magic-fueled rampage after the murder of Tara, her lover, Dawn says she wants to go to the crypt where Spike lives. Dawn doesn't know what Spike has done, and Buffy is unwilling to tell her. So she goes with Dawn to the crypt, only to find that Spike is no longer there. She leaves Dawn with Spike's strange but harmless demon friend, Clem, and leaves to try and find Willow (this all sounds pretty silly now that I'm typing it out. Oh, well.).
This was the point that so many of my friends had the trouble with. How could she even think of doing that? It's a terrible message to send! Clearly the writer (Marti Noxon, I believe) wasn't thinking straight. But none of that occurred to me when I first watched the scene. I thought that Buffy had limited choices, all of them more or less sucked, and she had to choose quickly. And she did. It never occurred to me to judge her. Yet so intense was the negative reaction from other fans that I did what I rarely do: I second-guessed myself. I started to wonder if I'd missed something, or there was something seriously wrong with the way I interpreted the scene. Eventually I came back to my original impression, and concluded that the scene was fine, and that the writer had known what she was doing.
So why the backlash? I think something like this happened: After "Seeing Red" aired, a number of stupid rape apologists started scrutinizing Buffy's actions (as they love to do) looking for excuses to let the man involved off the hook. These are the same kind of people who believe that a rape victim is lying if she acts "insufficiently traumatized" (link to the notorious case in Oregon). Some of them seized upon the fact that Buffy took her sister to Spike's lair in the next episode, and claimed it as evidence that what he had done hadn't been so bad. Which was ridiculous, of course... that was not the point of the scene at all. But it put the people who were aware of this, and weren't morons, in a bind. Should they ignore the morons? Or try to explain the complexity of the situation? Both were problematic. But claiming that the episode was at fault; that the scene was flawed or shouldn't have been shown at all, was simpler and (to some) more satisfying.
However... to embrace that idea was a very unfortunate choice, I would argue. Because if one takes that view, and still tries to make sense of the story, then Buffy's actions are bizarre, incomprensible... stupid, frankly. And however unwittingly, this fed into the bad old tradition of blaming rape victims. Not exactly blaming her for the assault, but blaming her for something. And plenty of misogynists in the fandom (it was truly sad to see how many there were) were more than happy to take that idea and run with it, and they continued to denigrate the character until the series ended a year later.
What's the moral of this story? Difficult though it may be, we have to prevent the badly intentioned people from setting the terms of our moral discussions. Chances are, they'll turn out badly.
This was the point that so many of my friends had the trouble with. How could she even think of doing that? It's a terrible message to send! Clearly the writer (Marti Noxon, I believe) wasn't thinking straight. But none of that occurred to me when I first watched the scene. I thought that Buffy had limited choices, all of them more or less sucked, and she had to choose quickly. And she did. It never occurred to me to judge her. Yet so intense was the negative reaction from other fans that I did what I rarely do: I second-guessed myself. I started to wonder if I'd missed something, or there was something seriously wrong with the way I interpreted the scene. Eventually I came back to my original impression, and concluded that the scene was fine, and that the writer had known what she was doing.
So why the backlash? I think something like this happened: After "Seeing Red" aired, a number of stupid rape apologists started scrutinizing Buffy's actions (as they love to do) looking for excuses to let the man involved off the hook. These are the same kind of people who believe that a rape victim is lying if she acts "insufficiently traumatized" (link to the notorious case in Oregon). Some of them seized upon the fact that Buffy took her sister to Spike's lair in the next episode, and claimed it as evidence that what he had done hadn't been so bad. Which was ridiculous, of course... that was not the point of the scene at all. But it put the people who were aware of this, and weren't morons, in a bind. Should they ignore the morons? Or try to explain the complexity of the situation? Both were problematic. But claiming that the episode was at fault; that the scene was flawed or shouldn't have been shown at all, was simpler and (to some) more satisfying.
However... to embrace that idea was a very unfortunate choice, I would argue. Because if one takes that view, and still tries to make sense of the story, then Buffy's actions are bizarre, incomprensible... stupid, frankly. And however unwittingly, this fed into the bad old tradition of blaming rape victims. Not exactly blaming her for the assault, but blaming her for something. And plenty of misogynists in the fandom (it was truly sad to see how many there were) were more than happy to take that idea and run with it, and they continued to denigrate the character until the series ended a year later.
What's the moral of this story? Difficult though it may be, we have to prevent the badly intentioned people from setting the terms of our moral discussions. Chances are, they'll turn out badly.