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jesuswasbatmanThis book came out last year after being first put forward five years previously, being overtaken in "books on race in specific works" by Doctor Who and Race.
Joss Whedon's feminist credentials and portrayal of gender have been much discussed over the years, but reactions to depiction of race in his works have been much more negative, due to both the relatively white-dominated demographics of his main characters, and the portrayal of what specific non-white characters he has depicted. A great deal of argument about Whedon and race in the past has been over whether the depiction of undead and otherwise supernatural evil characters in Buffy and Angel portrays them as evil in essence or because of socialisation, and whether depictions of them as evil in essence and requiring magical intervention to "redeem" are to be considered as racist metaphors literally "demonising" ethnic minorities. Some black people have rejected the whole concept of "vampires/demons are metaphorically black" as inherently insulting, and some of the arguments made have not been particularly edifying, as when a vocal faction of Buffy fandom decided at one point that it was racist to morally disapprove of a white pseudo-working-class bourgeois Englishman premeditatedly stalking and killing a working-class African-American woman, because in their metaphorical reading of the show he represented the oppressed African-American person and she the murderous white power structure. Despite some suggestions on those lines in the original call for papers, this book contains no essays significantly based on supernatural beings as metaphorical black people, and only a couple of brief allusions to the idea at all. What explorations of racial metaphors, as opposed to depictions of actual black human beings, are included in the book all involve Whedon's SF shows, which by not depicting Good and Evil in overtly essential and supernatural terms do not raise the issue to such a degree.
Since the book was conceived in 2011, the works covered are primarily Whedon's four major TV series of the 1990s and 2000s: the linked action-horror series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and the unconnected SF shows Firefly and Dollhouse, with one essay on the webcast superhero-parody mini-series Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I should say that I haven't seen Dollhouse or Doctor Horrible, so can't respond to the relevant essays very thoughtfully. There is no coverage of Whedon's comics work, and only a few "stop press" mentions of Whedon's later audiovisual works, such as the metafictional slasher film Cabin in the Woods, his modern-dress film version of the Shakespeare romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, and his contributions to the cinema and TV portions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
To start with the essays that most deal with my own personal preoccupations, I was very glad to read that two separate essays, Rachel McMurray's and Nelly Strehlau's, take different approaches to what for me is one of the most disturbing racial elements of Buffy, the implication that "feminism" is solely a phenomenon of contemporary US middle-class culture and that women from different eras or backgrounds can only be helpless victims of the (often ignorantly and stereotypically depicted) patriarchal elements of their culture. McMurray looks specifically at the other Slayers and Potential Slayers depicted in the TV show and their depiction as inferior or more vulnerable specifically through inferior communication ability, and Strehlau about the association of foreign and non-white characters on Buffy with a negatively-depicted past. Additionally in this area, Lynne Edwards points out the ease with which the African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean Slayers Kendra, Nikki, Sineya (the First), and Rona can be assigned to well-established US cultural stereotypes of African-American women. On a completely different personally-relevant note, Joel Hawkes discusses the depiction of Englishness in Buffy through the characters of Giles, Wesley, and Spike, and argues that Englishness is associated on the show with an initially unchallenged but later increasingly problematised type of "ancient wisdom", but also with initiatory crisis points in Buffy's life.
It may be a sign of either the general nature of race-based criticism at present, or of something to do with Whedon's work in particular, that most essays judge the works fairly negatively. The few largely-positive essays all have overtones of responses to more negative judgements: Rhonda V Wilcox suggests that the controversial depiction of Native American issues in "Pangs" is not "hipster racism" but a satire on dithering white centre-left responses to racial conflict which does not treat the usual good guys as worthy of admiration; Rejena Saulsberry uses sociological "strain theory" to argue for Charles Gunn as a realistic and sympathetic portrait in tragic form of the conflicts and pressures encountered by African-American men; and Mayan Jarnagin fiercely insists that Zoe Washburne is a three-dimensional portrayal of a heroic African-American (to simplify Firefly's worldbuilding) woman that transcends any ethnic stereotyping that a brief description of her might suggest, in particular arguing that the depiction of her relationship with Wash as emotionally supportive and actively and happily sexual avoids the more negative implications of the stereotype of the Strong Black Woman who doesn't need or has no time for romantic love.
On the more unambiguously negative side, Katia McClain dissects the outright ignorant and bigoted depiction of Roma people in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel; Masani McGee points out the importance of Blaxploitation films with female protagonists in establishing the possibility of the female action protagonist in Hollywood works, and hence paving the way for Buffy, and the particularly unpleasant implications of the depiction of Nikki in that light; and Candra K Gill argues that major African-American (again, simplifying the worldbuilding of Firefly) male characters in Whedon shows are largely depicted as plot devices in the service of white people's stories and fall into stereotypical "tough guy" or "mystic foreign sage" portrayals. (Gill does not mention what for me is another major racial issue in Buffy and Angel, the way that depictions of actual black men intersect extremely nastily with "supernatural beings are metaphorical black people" material, as human characters in the shows who are depicted as crossing a line into irrational bigotry and persecuting harmless or actively good supernatural beings are, with disturbing frequency, African-American men - see in particular Forrest Gates in Buffy Season Four, Gio in the Angel episode "That Old Gang of Mine", and to a degree Robin Wood in Buffy Season Seven.)
The metaphorical essays, as previously mentioned, all deal with Firefly and Dollhouse. Brent M Smith-Casanova discusses the Serenity crew as marginalised figures using mobility to successfully evade a capitalist and colonialist Alliance government. I had major problems with this essay as, for me, the fact that horribly misguided casting and worldbuilding decisions make Firefly appear to be a tale of more-sinister-for-being-off-screen implied Yellow Peril Yankee villains oppressing white and African-American people from a wholly idealised, noble, and non-racist Confederate States of America makes it hard to read as in any way racially admirable on a universe level. Daoine S Bachran takes an unusual metaphorical reading of Firefly, arguing that the Reavers and the general threat of space represent not the usual reading of Native Americans, but Mexico. Bachran also suggests that although Jayne is played by the white (and, it would turn out later, extremely racist) Adam Baldwin, various aspects of his character can be seen as echoing stereotypes of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.
On Dollhouse, Brandeise Monk-Payton discusses the show's clear (and at times directly stated) comparison of the Actives' indenture and abuse with US racial slavery, and Samira Nadkarni argues that, despite the show not having any overtly Jewish characters, its preoccupation with the alteration and survival of memory and its use of golem metaphors give it strong relevance to Jewish cultural identity and the Holocaust.
Joss Whedon's feminist credentials and portrayal of gender have been much discussed over the years, but reactions to depiction of race in his works have been much more negative, due to both the relatively white-dominated demographics of his main characters, and the portrayal of what specific non-white characters he has depicted. A great deal of argument about Whedon and race in the past has been over whether the depiction of undead and otherwise supernatural evil characters in Buffy and Angel portrays them as evil in essence or because of socialisation, and whether depictions of them as evil in essence and requiring magical intervention to "redeem" are to be considered as racist metaphors literally "demonising" ethnic minorities. Some black people have rejected the whole concept of "vampires/demons are metaphorically black" as inherently insulting, and some of the arguments made have not been particularly edifying, as when a vocal faction of Buffy fandom decided at one point that it was racist to morally disapprove of a white pseudo-working-class bourgeois Englishman premeditatedly stalking and killing a working-class African-American woman, because in their metaphorical reading of the show he represented the oppressed African-American person and she the murderous white power structure. Despite some suggestions on those lines in the original call for papers, this book contains no essays significantly based on supernatural beings as metaphorical black people, and only a couple of brief allusions to the idea at all. What explorations of racial metaphors, as opposed to depictions of actual black human beings, are included in the book all involve Whedon's SF shows, which by not depicting Good and Evil in overtly essential and supernatural terms do not raise the issue to such a degree.
Since the book was conceived in 2011, the works covered are primarily Whedon's four major TV series of the 1990s and 2000s: the linked action-horror series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and the unconnected SF shows Firefly and Dollhouse, with one essay on the webcast superhero-parody mini-series Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I should say that I haven't seen Dollhouse or Doctor Horrible, so can't respond to the relevant essays very thoughtfully. There is no coverage of Whedon's comics work, and only a few "stop press" mentions of Whedon's later audiovisual works, such as the metafictional slasher film Cabin in the Woods, his modern-dress film version of the Shakespeare romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, and his contributions to the cinema and TV portions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
To start with the essays that most deal with my own personal preoccupations, I was very glad to read that two separate essays, Rachel McMurray's and Nelly Strehlau's, take different approaches to what for me is one of the most disturbing racial elements of Buffy, the implication that "feminism" is solely a phenomenon of contemporary US middle-class culture and that women from different eras or backgrounds can only be helpless victims of the (often ignorantly and stereotypically depicted) patriarchal elements of their culture. McMurray looks specifically at the other Slayers and Potential Slayers depicted in the TV show and their depiction as inferior or more vulnerable specifically through inferior communication ability, and Strehlau about the association of foreign and non-white characters on Buffy with a negatively-depicted past. Additionally in this area, Lynne Edwards points out the ease with which the African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean Slayers Kendra, Nikki, Sineya (the First), and Rona can be assigned to well-established US cultural stereotypes of African-American women. On a completely different personally-relevant note, Joel Hawkes discusses the depiction of Englishness in Buffy through the characters of Giles, Wesley, and Spike, and argues that Englishness is associated on the show with an initially unchallenged but later increasingly problematised type of "ancient wisdom", but also with initiatory crisis points in Buffy's life.
It may be a sign of either the general nature of race-based criticism at present, or of something to do with Whedon's work in particular, that most essays judge the works fairly negatively. The few largely-positive essays all have overtones of responses to more negative judgements: Rhonda V Wilcox suggests that the controversial depiction of Native American issues in "Pangs" is not "hipster racism" but a satire on dithering white centre-left responses to racial conflict which does not treat the usual good guys as worthy of admiration; Rejena Saulsberry uses sociological "strain theory" to argue for Charles Gunn as a realistic and sympathetic portrait in tragic form of the conflicts and pressures encountered by African-American men; and Mayan Jarnagin fiercely insists that Zoe Washburne is a three-dimensional portrayal of a heroic African-American (to simplify Firefly's worldbuilding) woman that transcends any ethnic stereotyping that a brief description of her might suggest, in particular arguing that the depiction of her relationship with Wash as emotionally supportive and actively and happily sexual avoids the more negative implications of the stereotype of the Strong Black Woman who doesn't need or has no time for romantic love.
On the more unambiguously negative side, Katia McClain dissects the outright ignorant and bigoted depiction of Roma people in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel; Masani McGee points out the importance of Blaxploitation films with female protagonists in establishing the possibility of the female action protagonist in Hollywood works, and hence paving the way for Buffy, and the particularly unpleasant implications of the depiction of Nikki in that light; and Candra K Gill argues that major African-American (again, simplifying the worldbuilding of Firefly) male characters in Whedon shows are largely depicted as plot devices in the service of white people's stories and fall into stereotypical "tough guy" or "mystic foreign sage" portrayals. (Gill does not mention what for me is another major racial issue in Buffy and Angel, the way that depictions of actual black men intersect extremely nastily with "supernatural beings are metaphorical black people" material, as human characters in the shows who are depicted as crossing a line into irrational bigotry and persecuting harmless or actively good supernatural beings are, with disturbing frequency, African-American men - see in particular Forrest Gates in Buffy Season Four, Gio in the Angel episode "That Old Gang of Mine", and to a degree Robin Wood in Buffy Season Seven.)
The metaphorical essays, as previously mentioned, all deal with Firefly and Dollhouse. Brent M Smith-Casanova discusses the Serenity crew as marginalised figures using mobility to successfully evade a capitalist and colonialist Alliance government. I had major problems with this essay as, for me, the fact that horribly misguided casting and worldbuilding decisions make Firefly appear to be a tale of more-sinister-for-being-off-screen implied Yellow Peril Yankee villains oppressing white and African-American people from a wholly idealised, noble, and non-racist Confederate States of America makes it hard to read as in any way racially admirable on a universe level. Daoine S Bachran takes an unusual metaphorical reading of Firefly, arguing that the Reavers and the general threat of space represent not the usual reading of Native Americans, but Mexico. Bachran also suggests that although Jayne is played by the white (and, it would turn out later, extremely racist) Adam Baldwin, various aspects of his character can be seen as echoing stereotypes of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.
On Dollhouse, Brandeise Monk-Payton discusses the show's clear (and at times directly stated) comparison of the Actives' indenture and abuse with US racial slavery, and Samira Nadkarni argues that, despite the show not having any overtly Jewish characters, its preoccupation with the alteration and survival of memory and its use of golem metaphors give it strong relevance to Jewish cultural identity and the Holocaust.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-26 03:38 am (UTC)