It's Nikki Wood's Fucking Coat: An Essay About Race In the Buffyverse
So, for my Film In American Society term paper I wrote on the subject of race in the Buffyverse. It's long, topping out at just over 7,000 words, and contains spoilers for the entirity of Buffy, Angel, and some of the supplemental canon material from the post-series comics. It's also, as of yet, un-betaed so any typos, misplaced words, or factual
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I like BtVS so much that it's very uncomfortable for me to face this kind of criticism of the show. It's impossible to ignore the overwhelming whiteness of most of the characters, but it's also easy to think "well, that's not what it was addressing."
So, thanks for the essay. You made your case to a resistant audience. I especially agree with your endnote about Jasmine. I never liked any of the Connor arc, and I think you're right that there is not enough skeevy in the world to deal with that particular couple of episodes.
You mention being a student... Have you ever heard of the International Assoc. for the Fantastic in the Arts? There's a yearly conference in March, and this would be an excellent paper to present there. If you think you might be interested, check out iafa.org. (Please forgive me if you're a past attendee and I just don't recognize you.)
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First, Rawat:
http://niralimagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/navi-rawat-2.jpg
http://niralimagazine.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-upload/prepic/navi-rawat-head.jpg
Second, Dushku:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Eliza_Dushku_May_2004_holding_coffee.jpg/411px-Eliza_Dushku_May_2004_holding_coffee.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/lightsoutprints/8_X_10_LV/E_LV/Eliza_Dushku_10LV.jpg
Because the fact that Dushku is not white in the sense that Gellar, Hannigan, Brendan, Marsters, Stewart Head, OR Green are white AND she's coded as urban street rather than the upper, privileged class of Cordelia, I don't question my inclusion of Dushku's character Faith in this discussion. The fact that Faith is not black is undebatable -- the fact that she is not representing minority in the Buffyverse is debatable.
I think I made a good argument here that between the coding's involved and how those coding's relate to Wood and Gunn (who are both urban and black), Faith's identification as not white is fairly firmly entrenched in the Buffy mythos. I also agree with another commenter that if they had cast Faith as of a dark color, rather than a borderline one, the outrage would have been there.
Part of my inclusion of Faith also has to do with Origin Stories, which did feature Faith in a not insignificant capacity. Namely a particular section of Origin Stories where Faith, having just returned to Sunnydale, sees Spike sulking about a graveyard and assumes -- not knowing differently -- he's up to no good. She attacks him, he fights back, goes down, and then Buffy hits her from off-screen. The shot pans from Faith staggering to Buffy standing there tall, her blonde hair and light features shining in the low light as she smiles.
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I'm (so far) limited to the television series, and not able to judge the strength of your argument with respect to the other materials. EDIT: sorry, I hadn't re-read the top of the essay, and thought "Origin Stories" was one of the comics.
I didn't say that you were completely wrong, I said I was less convinced by that than by the other elements of your paper--mainly because I see Faith more as a component of a class argument.
Yes, I agree too that if Faith had been cast as "of a dark color, rather than a borderline one" fans would have been outraged. That goes a long way toward making your argument.
Anyway, I thought it was insightful. FWIW.
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