[IBARW] It's not murder, it's a metaphor

[coffeeandink]

Comments

[troubleinchina]

Thank you.

I was trying to get some sort of sense out of my conversation with mystyron, but it was going nowhere since apparently if I don't see what she's saying I haven't seen the show and am calling her names, or something. I don't know.

I didn't have the tools to explain what I was trying to, and now I do.

Thank you.

Hmph - I can't post there, because I have to say things like

[bellatrys]

"mystyron, are you being intellectually dishonest or do you just have pudding for brains?" and then the whole thing devolves into a Blessed Are The Nicemakers mess and I just don't have patience for that nonsense. And it's totally nonsense - and arrogant insult, to boot - to say that if you don't agree you must simply not have seen the show.

Re: Hmph - I can't post there, because I have to say things like

[troubleinchina]

I honestly convinced myself I was misunderstanding her point, because who in their right mind would think "nice white lady killin' the baddies" is a good stand in for race on Buffy?

No, no, you're right there--

[bellatrys]

Logically, you would have been misunderstanding because nobody in their right mind would think "nice white lady killing baddies" is a GOOD stand in for race, although someone could certainly argue (like someone else in the thread was trying to do) that the Buffy *writers* sometimes seemed to be going in that direction, especially on Angel, but also with the good-natured demon Clem, trying in a half-assed way to use species' Otherness as a metaphor for inter-human Othering sometimes, and as a metaphor for our own Evil Sides at other times, and at still other times as a simplistic Suspense-Generator plot device, with no more ethical factor than Man vs. Nature.

But accepting the premise that these half-assed and inconsistent writerly choices did, yes, represent the whole and conscious attempt of Mutant Enemy to deal with racial issues in a show set in SoCal, and arguing from there that this was a GOOD way of doing so - is nuts

[cofax7]

No, tithes to hell and plates of milk do not symbolize trade deficits.

The internets, they are yours. How would you like them delivered?

Excellent post.

[katie_m]

Wait, so, the argument there was that people of color only show up once Sunnydale's gone to hell and that's... good, racism-wise?

[liviapenn]

I was just reading a random DCU/Buffy crossover last night where Clark and Lois were noticing that Sunnydale's demographics did not exactly match real-world southern California's demographics... there's a family of original characters in the story that happens to be Hispanic, and one of them literally says "oh yeah, Sunnydale, where all the stupid white people live. We're not dumb enough to go THERE after dark."

Which is, I guess, a better explanation (for why there aren't any non-white people in Sunnydale) than NO explanation at all, but... exactly what you said.

[gareth_wilson]

I assumed that there were no Hispanics in Sunnydale because they all knew what "Boca del Infierno" meant.

[zillah975]

Thanks very much for this. I've been struggling with how to articulate the things you've laid out so clearly here and had mostly just been flailing uselessly. *bookmarks*

[karcy]

A very good post.