Comments | thebratqueen: Wesley, AtS and gay stereotypes

thebratqueen

Wesley, AtS and gay stereotypes

Feb 12, 2003 13:17

A few weeks ago I did an essay on Willow and Tara and gay stereotypes, wherein I said that though I didn't believe ME ever meant to be homophobic, they inadvertently acted that way through some of the symbolism and cliches they employed.

At the time I promised the flip side of this, which was a discussion of how, if Buffy screwed up with the gay ( Read more... )

meta, angel, buffy

Comments 42

zortified February 12 2003, 13:00:52 UTC

Wow. How cool! Very thorough and thoughtful and persuasive and all that rot. makes me wish the Angel folk were doing all what you said, on purpose. :-)

So they can make Wes better by letting Gunn or Angel kiss him.

thebratqueen February 12 2003, 13:21:43 UTC

Or both. Judges would allow a threeway kiss. It's the gateway drug to threeway shags ;)

stakebait February 12 2003, 13:19:48 UTC

Great essay! Really well argued.

With all that, I have to admit, I find the coyness about Lorne's sexuality insulting. He can be gay, he can be bi, he can be something else that they have on Pylea that doesn't even make sense unless you can survive decapitation, but it just strains my credulity to breaking point that one way or the other it would never be *mentioned* by a man so very open to such topics, especially now that he's living in the same house with Our Heroes.

And Fred-the-beard, not only for Wes but also for Lorne in his stepford "Boy I love the spunky ones, ain't she purty!" guise, similarly makes me twitch.

Mer

thebratqueen February 12 2003, 13:25:02 UTC

They have gotten better about Lorne though. The last blatent mention of his sexuality I can remember was Wesley snarking about Lorne spending time with a "He, she or it" which implies that either the gang knows that Lorne's trysexual (ba dum bum) and doesn't care, or they're back with Spike re: Angel, also known as "just admit it already".

I don't think since then they've done the blatent "I'm gonna go spend time with the senoritas" stupidity a la some of the dumber lines from season 2 since then, but OTOH I may have just blanked those out due to sheer horror.

stakebait February 12 2003, 13:34:18 UTC

I'm bad at remembering what happens when, so you could be right, but I know there's been some gratuitous Fred-ogling by Lorne that turned my stomach.

Mer

thebratqueen February 12 2003, 13:40:17 UTC

True, but I file that under "obnoxious Mary Sueing of Fred" rather than "blatent attempt to try to convince us that Lorne is straight". And I'm pretty sure Lorne doing that was in season 3, which had everybody doing that to Fred at some point.

Which isn't to say that I disagree about them trying to push the Lorne-is-straight thing. B/c they've definitely done that from time to time (wanna say Mere Smith is the worst offender here but I can't swear to it). But at least then it was always restricted to a very out of character line, such as the worship of Fred or the "hanging with the senioritas" comments, instead of through some attempt to deny Lorne's sissyhood. I worried more for that at the end of season 3 when they started to gradually make his clothes more plain looking, but fortunately that stopped in season 4 as well.

Thread 12

anna_dreya February 12 2003, 13:58:30 UTC

hee, that was well worth the wait.

actually, i think this tops the last one because while the other one convinced me to think about it, this one actually made me like the show more an extra couple points- even if, as said above, it probably wasn't done on purpose. way to write persuasively. :)

on top of that, i think this one was, in general, written much better. it was a little more focused because the other essay addressed the ambiguity of whether or not the metaphor shift was intentional.

on a side note, i found your lj because i remembered one bored day that about seven years ago (i was about twelve, i think) i was looking up vAmPyRe stuff, and i came across VampChron Meets MST3K. Went and looked you up, and gee, you were watching buffy and angel (not to mention raving about Harry Potter), and put way more thought into the shows than i ever did. since following your posts, while i've not always agreed with you, i've definitely thought a lot more about what i was seeing.

okay, enough foot-kissing. :-p

kita0610 February 12 2003, 16:42:27 UTC

I still want to eat your brain.

This is delicious stuff. I wish it had a bit more focus on Angel himself, cause then I could swipe it for StA....

;}

thebratqueen February 12 2003, 17:04:25 UTC

I could probably add stuff about Angel if you pointed me in a direction of what you felt was missing.

raincitygirl February 12 2003, 17:37:02 UTC

This is so awesome. TBQ, I wanna be you when I grow up ( ... )

thebratqueen February 13 2003, 08:04:25 UTC

This is so awesome. TBQ, I wanna be you when I grow up.

Cool. Hey, when you do it can you let me know what I turn out to be? I've been wondering about that. ;)

*WHY* do you think AtS deals with coded sexuality so much remarkably better than BtVS? What's the key difference? Is it philosophy, is it production personnel, the structure of the show?

Ironically I suspect it's because they don't have any gay characters. Because none of them are flat-out admitted to be gay, they're allowed to make the subtext text because it's all in good fun. Admitting that, for example, Lorne or Wes was gay and having as many gay-positive subtext on the show might come across as a Gay Agenda [tm] and cause a backlash. But when you've mired all the men of the show in love triangles that focus on women, then it's no harm no foul ( ... )