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sharplittleteethSpent yesterday watching the second half of Buffy season 6. As a consequence, am somewhat fucked up.
It wasn't the unrelenting misery and angst that broke me. It was poor doomed Tara, bloody sacrifice on the altar of Plot.
I've seen it before. I knew she was going to die. That only made it worse.
There's a lot of controversy surrounding her death, accusations that Joss Whedon gave in to the evil/dead lesbian cliche, and the betrayal felt by many who found inspiration and courage and hope in the Willow/Tara relationship. I have a lot of sympathy with these arguments (even if the Willow/Kennedy storyline went some small way to redress that).
But what makes it hurt was this: I really liked Tara.
I am not a masochist. I watch television for pleasure. Since I have at least some pretensions to maturity, I like my pleasures to have some depth, some bitterness mixed in with the sweet. But there are two great pleasures that distinguish serial fiction like television from "single-shot" stories like film or novels.
One is the sense of community, of the experience shared between fans of watching something special unfold.
The other, simpler and more direct, is of spending time with people you love.
Willow and Tara are the characters I identify most with. I might aspire to Giles's wisdom, fantasise about being as cool as Spike, or think that Faith was hot. But the two shy, geeky witches in their unflattering dresses held a special joy for me. They were they characters I related to. They were the ones I enjoyed hanging out with most. (Plus, you know... girl on girl action.)
That's why watching season 6 fucks me up. Tara is going to die. Someone I love is going to die.
I'm being a geek, I know.
They're just characters, pieces of fiction dancing on a screen. But isn't that the point of art? To arrange pigments on a canvas or electrons on a screen, in such delicate patterns that they move our hearts? Joss Whedon himself has said he would rather make a show that one hundred people had to watch, than a thousand merely liked to.
I can step back from the show, of course. I can see that Tara's death adds a fragility and undercurrent to all that came before. But let's be honest. Buffy is not Shakespeare. Not every episode is a work of genius. And in Season 6 there are some downright clunkers. We keep watching for the wit, and for the love we feel for the characters.
And for those moments of heart-rending beauty, like Tara's speech to Willow at the end of Entropy about the work that needs to be done to rebuild their relationship, the trust that has to be rebuilt, the intimacy that has to be re-woven, the places in each other's live that have to be re-found.
"It's a long and important process," she says, desolate and frightened. "And... can we just skip it? Can... can you just be kissing me now?"
It wasn't the unrelenting misery and angst that broke me. It was poor doomed Tara, bloody sacrifice on the altar of Plot.
I've seen it before. I knew she was going to die. That only made it worse.
There's a lot of controversy surrounding her death, accusations that Joss Whedon gave in to the evil/dead lesbian cliche, and the betrayal felt by many who found inspiration and courage and hope in the Willow/Tara relationship. I have a lot of sympathy with these arguments (even if the Willow/Kennedy storyline went some small way to redress that).
But what makes it hurt was this: I really liked Tara.
I am not a masochist. I watch television for pleasure. Since I have at least some pretensions to maturity, I like my pleasures to have some depth, some bitterness mixed in with the sweet. But there are two great pleasures that distinguish serial fiction like television from "single-shot" stories like film or novels.
One is the sense of community, of the experience shared between fans of watching something special unfold.
The other, simpler and more direct, is of spending time with people you love.
Willow and Tara are the characters I identify most with. I might aspire to Giles's wisdom, fantasise about being as cool as Spike, or think that Faith was hot. But the two shy, geeky witches in their unflattering dresses held a special joy for me. They were they characters I related to. They were the ones I enjoyed hanging out with most. (Plus, you know... girl on girl action.)
That's why watching season 6 fucks me up. Tara is going to die. Someone I love is going to die.
I'm being a geek, I know.
They're just characters, pieces of fiction dancing on a screen. But isn't that the point of art? To arrange pigments on a canvas or electrons on a screen, in such delicate patterns that they move our hearts? Joss Whedon himself has said he would rather make a show that one hundred people had to watch, than a thousand merely liked to.
I can step back from the show, of course. I can see that Tara's death adds a fragility and undercurrent to all that came before. But let's be honest. Buffy is not Shakespeare. Not every episode is a work of genius. And in Season 6 there are some downright clunkers. We keep watching for the wit, and for the love we feel for the characters.
And for those moments of heart-rending beauty, like Tara's speech to Willow at the end of Entropy about the work that needs to be done to rebuild their relationship, the trust that has to be rebuilt, the intimacy that has to be re-woven, the places in each other's live that have to be re-found.
"It's a long and important process," she says, desolate and frightened. "And... can we just skip it? Can... can you just be kissing me now?"
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 12:44 am (UTC)While yes, I can understand that some may have seen her role and subsequent departure from the show to be the perverbial black man clique, in some ways, her character and its interaction with Willow didn't have an awful lot more that could be done with it that wouldn't have of caused dissention amoungst the Buffy fans for an entirely different reason.
Willow had a job to do in relearning how to be a witch and in my opinion, the way the show was going, she wasn't going to be left the room to do that effectively unless they got rid of the one person who, after she returned from being all dark evil witchy, was the one who was stopping her from using magic and therefore recovering.
Oh - and that quote... love it. Probably the best they ever came up with for those two characters.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 02:10 pm (UTC)Hence the "bloody sacrifice on the altar of Plot" line.
There are hints that Tara's fate was orginally meant to be Oz's. Which would have been distressing in its own way. But not so much to the lesbians.
I'm not a lesbian. The cliche didn't insult me persanlly. But there were many that it did. And they have a point. Buffy prided itself on being a0 about femal empowerment, and b)the show that broke the cliches.
Plus that whole business with staff writers repeatedly telling fans that Tara wouldn't be killed was just cruel.
Oh - and that quote... love it.
And can't you just hear Oz saying it? I think Joss had that one in his notebook for a long time.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 03:04 pm (UTC)True... but if they'd let her live, then fans would have complained that the whole Willow-Tara thing was stupid or repetitive etc rather than complaining that Tara shouldn't have of died.
Plus that whole business with staff writers repeatedly telling fans that Tara wouldn't be killed was just cruel.
I think I vaguely remember that... they also said though iirc that they weren't going to say anything about what was going to happen though and that fans would just have to watch to find out...
no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 02:14 pm (UTC)I was never very fond of Tara (she always looked like she was about to burst into tears)
Must be a geek-boy thing. Sad girls in snow, and all that.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 05:00 pm (UTC)But not for South Park. Or the Simpsons.
Blasphemy, probably. But it's why I've fled screaming into the rose-and-mecha-scented arms of Japanese popular culture and contemporary art. because it's almost free of irony.
Well, that and the fact they can't get enough filigree.:)
I sound like a Japanophile, I know, and I'm not (there's a whole separate post in that), but it's one of the refreshing qualities about Japanese culture in general that I do identify with.
You, sir, are a Megatokyo fan.:)
Have you seen
no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 09:36 pm (UTC)ah, you shouldnt have said anything, he'll be round to liberate it soon ;]
no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 06:52 pm (UTC)It *does* have a Sad Girl in Snow on it, after all.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 06:08 pm (UTC)What shits me is the New Irony, where wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt or watching reality tv suddenly makes you witty and clever, dahling.
Irony is never an excuse.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-04 02:35 pm (UTC)I suspect I'll cry when I watch season 6 again.
:-/
no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 06:27 pm (UTC)Except for the Spike/Buffy angst, which mostly left me cold.