The Feminist Filter: School Hard

[gabrielleabelle]

Whoa. The LJ post entry thing looks different. Weird.

Anyhow, I'm planning to be doing birthday stuff this weekend and so won't have a chance to do The Feminist Filter. I'm eager to do School Hard though, so let's do it now! *bounces*

Mission Statement:This series is intended to outline the feminist text of each episode so as to provoke and

Comments

[gillo]

So much to agree with here. I've added a few points in comments because I just can't stop myself, but also

[gabrielleabelle]

Spike is almost as objectified as Buffy when we see him in The Bronze - two equally beautiful, lethal creatures.

I don't know. I'd kinda dispute that. Cause it's clearly a situation where we are getting an explicit male gaze, something that's rare on BtVS. It's similar to the view of Buffy we get throughout Passion with Angelus watching her in stalker-fashion. While we, as ladies who find Spike hot, obviously view him as attractive in the scene, I don't think the scene is at all constructed in any particularly special way to encourage that (unlike scenes we'll get of Spike later in S6).

yet part of her badness is expressed through her intimidating boyfriend and her readiness, one presumes, to cuckold him with Spike - not exactly a feminist definition of badness.

Ah, yes! Beat me to it. :)

[flagless_piracy]

Hm, I don't know. I'm with you on the male gaze of the Bronze scene, but the very introduction of Spike does have the lingering camera shot moving slowly from his feet to his face, the way women are more-or-less typically introduced on film. An article on Spike in European Journal of Cultural Studies made the point that that was a typical fetish shot. (A very interesting article btw, dealing precisely with Spike's genderbending. I think that it's called 'Queering the Bitch', though I might be mistaken, as the file is on my work computer and I can't check.)

[gabrielleabelle]

Very true. I was pretty much just responding in regards to the scene in the Bronze.

[hello_spikey]

While we, as ladies who find Spike hot, obviously view him as attractive in the scene, I don't think the scene is at all constructed in any particularly special way to encourage that

, damnit.

(hee! But no, I'm thinking now about how my own drool colored my viewing of the scene. As in "Buffy? We saw Buffy?")