Joss's character's are weak (Meta)
Jun. 22nd, 2008 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iceminkThis isn't as well thought out as it should be probably, or at least not as well written. But the meta bug grabbed hold of me this morning and wouldn't let go.
I used to be a huge collector of comic books. I’m not anymore, but the other day I went down to the local comic store to pick up the Buffy and Angel comics. I got to chatting with owner about this and that and I mentioned how sorry I was that Joss wouldn’t be writing the Wonder Woman movie anymore, and he said, “Yeah, he’s great at writing strong female characters.” The funny thing is, after I left it occurred to me that the strength of BtVS isn’t that Joss wrote strong female characters, it’s that he wrote weak ones.
That seems counter intuitive at first. After all we tend to think that for all these years there have been all these wishy washy female characters out there in TV land. But as I thought about the reasons I started reading comics in the first place, I realized that the characters were strong, they were simply limited in what the writers allowed them to do.
For instance, as I kid I loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now the turtles themselves were all guys, but then there was April. She was a reporter and the turtles friend. She was actually a very tough character, sort of a Lois Lane. In fact if the character had any flaws, it was the same one Lois Lane has where she is always trying to find the next story and her curiosity gets her into trouble that she can’t get out of on her own. Other than that she’s really never developed enough to really have any weaknesses. A lot of female characters in the cartoons I watched as a kid where like this. It wasn't that they were weak, they just weren't allowed in the battles like the boys were.
That’s a common theme in action shows. If the hero’s have weaknesses it’s of the kryptonite variety. Something takes away their powers, but in a personality sense they often don’t have any flaws that flesh them out as characters.
It’s not just female characters that suffer from this lack of flaws. Look at Star Trek: The Next Generation. It had several female characters, and since so often on the show the conflict is resolved through science, Dr. Crusher could easily be the one to save the day, and the first head of security was also female. But the only characters who really have flaws are the non-humans. Data is too analytical and has no emotions. Warf is too obsessed with his honor and has a bit of a temper. But what are Captain Picard’s or Will Riker’s flaws? I can’t really think of Picard having any real weaknesses until we get to the movie First Contact. In fact the whole strength of the movie is Picard’s obsession with destroying the Borg. Now I’m sure if I wrote Star Trek fanfic I would have spent a lot more time studying the episodes and the characters and I would have found things here and there to use as weaknesses in the characters to make them more interesting.
But in Buffy we don’t have to delve to deeply. Buffy’s most obvious flaw is her self-absorption. She thinks pretty much everything has to do with her, and sure, a lot of times on the Hellmouth it does. But clearly this is a trait she had back when she was Fiesta Queen at Hemery, not a result of her being the Slayer.
She also tends to bear too much of the weight of her duties alone, and keep things from her friends. The show constantly points out that she is stronger with her friends than without. The moral of “The Yoko Factor” is that they are all at their best together, and similarly Season 7 is about the sharing of power. But in Season 6 we see how badly things fall apart when she keeps her friends out.
And perhaps Buffy’s biggest flaw, though not her most obvious, is that she really has no moral philosophy. Certainly she has a general sense of right and wrong, but most of her moral decisions are based on what she has been told by others (society or the Watcher’s council). She follows the humans are good demons are bad line very closely, except when she has some sort of connection with the demons in question (Angel, Spike, even Oz). And when Faith accidentally kills the Mayor’s aide, her immediate response is to want to call the police, with no real thought about what that means. Instead of dealing with the moral implications of Faith’s accidental slaying of a human, she wants to turn Faith over to the mortal authorities who at best will think Faith is crazy if she tells them she thought the guy was a vampire, and at worst will think she’s a liar.
When Buffy thinks she’s killed a human in season 6, she acts in the same way. She goes to turn herself over to the police without any thought for what that means in terms of consequences for the world or her sister. Buffy isn’t capable of judging the morality of her accidental killing of a human being. She’s so caught in black and white that she can’t give herself any leeway for what she did. Perhaps she was trying to keep herself from ending up as Faith did, but that shows an inability to differentiate the moral difference when Faith killed a human thinking he was a vampire, and from when she killed the volcanologist in cold blood. Buffy does think about these things much, which for someone who often acts as judge jury and executioner is definitely a flaw.
That’s not to say Buffy can’t still be heroic, or that she’s a bad person. But she’s a better character, and seems more like a real human being because of her flaws, not in spite of them.
In fact look at Faith, one of the most flawed characters of the show. Also I think a popular one. I know when I first watched season three, I wanted so much for the Scoobies to reach out to her when she was playing double agent. To bring her back into the fold. Faith is such an enduring character because of her flaws. And even her redemption leaves her with several flaws. She’s still afraid to let people close to her, and in “Orpheus” we see that she’s very tempted to just give up rather than to keep fighting the good fight.
And the list goes on. Willow’s flaws lead her to nearly destroy the world. Cordelia is heavily flawed, which makes her becoming a champion so much more satisfying that if some sweet self-sacrificing girl had followed her path.
Joss wasn’t brilliant for writing strong female characters (although all of the characters I mentioned have very strong characteristics too) but in writing well rounded female characters. Characters that can be noble and petty, loving and cruel, right and wrong. In other words, characters that act like human beings.
I used to be a huge collector of comic books. I’m not anymore, but the other day I went down to the local comic store to pick up the Buffy and Angel comics. I got to chatting with owner about this and that and I mentioned how sorry I was that Joss wouldn’t be writing the Wonder Woman movie anymore, and he said, “Yeah, he’s great at writing strong female characters.” The funny thing is, after I left it occurred to me that the strength of BtVS isn’t that Joss wrote strong female characters, it’s that he wrote weak ones.
That seems counter intuitive at first. After all we tend to think that for all these years there have been all these wishy washy female characters out there in TV land. But as I thought about the reasons I started reading comics in the first place, I realized that the characters were strong, they were simply limited in what the writers allowed them to do.
For instance, as I kid I loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now the turtles themselves were all guys, but then there was April. She was a reporter and the turtles friend. She was actually a very tough character, sort of a Lois Lane. In fact if the character had any flaws, it was the same one Lois Lane has where she is always trying to find the next story and her curiosity gets her into trouble that she can’t get out of on her own. Other than that she’s really never developed enough to really have any weaknesses. A lot of female characters in the cartoons I watched as a kid where like this. It wasn't that they were weak, they just weren't allowed in the battles like the boys were.
That’s a common theme in action shows. If the hero’s have weaknesses it’s of the kryptonite variety. Something takes away their powers, but in a personality sense they often don’t have any flaws that flesh them out as characters.
It’s not just female characters that suffer from this lack of flaws. Look at Star Trek: The Next Generation. It had several female characters, and since so often on the show the conflict is resolved through science, Dr. Crusher could easily be the one to save the day, and the first head of security was also female. But the only characters who really have flaws are the non-humans. Data is too analytical and has no emotions. Warf is too obsessed with his honor and has a bit of a temper. But what are Captain Picard’s or Will Riker’s flaws? I can’t really think of Picard having any real weaknesses until we get to the movie First Contact. In fact the whole strength of the movie is Picard’s obsession with destroying the Borg. Now I’m sure if I wrote Star Trek fanfic I would have spent a lot more time studying the episodes and the characters and I would have found things here and there to use as weaknesses in the characters to make them more interesting.
But in Buffy we don’t have to delve to deeply. Buffy’s most obvious flaw is her self-absorption. She thinks pretty much everything has to do with her, and sure, a lot of times on the Hellmouth it does. But clearly this is a trait she had back when she was Fiesta Queen at Hemery, not a result of her being the Slayer.
She also tends to bear too much of the weight of her duties alone, and keep things from her friends. The show constantly points out that she is stronger with her friends than without. The moral of “The Yoko Factor” is that they are all at their best together, and similarly Season 7 is about the sharing of power. But in Season 6 we see how badly things fall apart when she keeps her friends out.
And perhaps Buffy’s biggest flaw, though not her most obvious, is that she really has no moral philosophy. Certainly she has a general sense of right and wrong, but most of her moral decisions are based on what she has been told by others (society or the Watcher’s council). She follows the humans are good demons are bad line very closely, except when she has some sort of connection with the demons in question (Angel, Spike, even Oz). And when Faith accidentally kills the Mayor’s aide, her immediate response is to want to call the police, with no real thought about what that means. Instead of dealing with the moral implications of Faith’s accidental slaying of a human, she wants to turn Faith over to the mortal authorities who at best will think Faith is crazy if she tells them she thought the guy was a vampire, and at worst will think she’s a liar.
When Buffy thinks she’s killed a human in season 6, she acts in the same way. She goes to turn herself over to the police without any thought for what that means in terms of consequences for the world or her sister. Buffy isn’t capable of judging the morality of her accidental killing of a human being. She’s so caught in black and white that she can’t give herself any leeway for what she did. Perhaps she was trying to keep herself from ending up as Faith did, but that shows an inability to differentiate the moral difference when Faith killed a human thinking he was a vampire, and from when she killed the volcanologist in cold blood. Buffy does think about these things much, which for someone who often acts as judge jury and executioner is definitely a flaw.
That’s not to say Buffy can’t still be heroic, or that she’s a bad person. But she’s a better character, and seems more like a real human being because of her flaws, not in spite of them.
In fact look at Faith, one of the most flawed characters of the show. Also I think a popular one. I know when I first watched season three, I wanted so much for the Scoobies to reach out to her when she was playing double agent. To bring her back into the fold. Faith is such an enduring character because of her flaws. And even her redemption leaves her with several flaws. She’s still afraid to let people close to her, and in “Orpheus” we see that she’s very tempted to just give up rather than to keep fighting the good fight.
And the list goes on. Willow’s flaws lead her to nearly destroy the world. Cordelia is heavily flawed, which makes her becoming a champion so much more satisfying that if some sweet self-sacrificing girl had followed her path.
Joss wasn’t brilliant for writing strong female characters (although all of the characters I mentioned have very strong characteristics too) but in writing well rounded female characters. Characters that can be noble and petty, loving and cruel, right and wrong. In other words, characters that act like human beings.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 04:58 pm (UTC)Interesting thought though. I'd never considered that before.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 03:08 am (UTC)