It's Nikki Wood's Fucking Coat: An Essay About Race In the Buffyverse

[saeva]

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

Comments

[glishara]

It's an interesting essay! I do agree that Jasmine would add more power to your argument, and I would probably have touched on her rather than on Faith. The section on Faith had me scratching my head a bit: the concept of dark clothes and makeup versus light is significantly more metaphorical than most of your arguments, and I felt like that part was a stretch. The concept of black hat/white hat has always been shorthand for good/evil, and while that's tied into racial issues, I think it either needs more treatment than it gets here or to be saved for a different piece. The Wood and Gunn arcs are much more interesting in this context, and had me going, "Wow, that's true" a lot

[saeva]

I feel that Jasmine is a weaker argument than Faith because the vivid visual imagery of Faith -- where her make-up accents her dark features when she's evil and her light features when she's good (or the way in which Buffy's do the reverse, including Faith's choice of clothing while possessing Buffy) is so visually impacting. It's impossible to miss while you're watching the show and, yes, I think that it has a heavy subconscious impact on the viewer

[glishara]

I feel that it is a stretch because the central issue of the essay is a portrayal of race specifically in the Buffyverse, not a treatment on the imagery of good and evil in the series, or of social class and urban vs suburban. You make really strong cases for Wood and Gunn, in particular, but for me, at least, when you talked about Faith, it felt as though you didn't have enough examples of actual minority characters to support your case, so you found a way to make Faith work into it, with the issues of dark clothing and dark hair

[esmeraldus_neo]

I have to agree that although the light/dark coding is there, Faith is white, and is a better example of class issues than race. It's the weakest part of a strong essay--but there's always a weakest bit

[scrollgirl]

Chao-Ahn, though she survives, is so insignificant to the story that later tie-in canon lists her as dead and, on-screen, she provides primarily comedic relief.

I haven't read through the entire essay yet, but I wanted to point out that Chao-Ahn dies in the final battle in "Chosen", which explains the tie-in comics.

[saeva]

That's what I originally thought but when I went to doublecheck, it says she's shown going towards the bus during the escape scene in Chosen. I'll take your word for it though, honestly, until I have time to go through the caps and either find her death or her escape. *laughs* *edits*

[freneticfloetry]

Earlier this evening, I remembered that I'd commented on the whitewashed John/Teyla manip posted a few days ago, and headed over to see if the artist had posted a response. Not to me, obviously, but the discussion that unfolded from your follow-up (as ultimately pointless as it turned out to be) made me curious. So here I am

[roachspit]

I think it's a very interesting and thorough paper (says the suburban white girl).

Actually, I've always thought that the only reason Faith was portrayed by a white actress was because, if they'd cast an actress of color for that specific part, the outraged screaming would *never* have stopped--and rightly so. If they'd skipped over Kendra and gone directly to Faith, with Bianca Lawson in the part, even the least observant of viewers would have realized what was going on and gone, "No, that's not cool. Stop it."

I never watched Angel all that often, but to see Gunn's arc summed up like that, ouch. I'm not sure I have the words to describe my reaction beyond "a strong desire to invent a time machine for the sole purpose of going back in time and screaming at the writers."

PS: Spike's accent is, I think, supposed to be South London, but it's admittedly mock-South London, as performed by a slumming member of the upper-class. It's a mess, is what it is.

[0nlymemories]

This isn't terribly helpful, but technically the United Kingdom doesn't really encompass Ireland. The Irish were just one of the first victims of the British empirical instinct. You could probably use Western European to just as effective use, since the very fact of Angel's Irishness is used to code him as other from the other vampires. (Which starts to get into the class side of things, but if I start waving my hands about that I'll get overheated and have to have a sitdown, and no one really wants to see that.)

The entire essay is well thought out, and very interesting. I very much enjoyed reading it.

Although another quibble, in this sentence:

As early as season four Gunn, feeling insincere due to the repressed flirtation between Fred and Wes

I rather hope you mean 'insecure', rather than insincere.

[saeva]

Fixed. Thanks.