Blame the writers
I've been feeling a little creatively stifled lately. For months now. No Inspiration. And in times like these I turn to what I consider the most inspired stories, hoping some of that brilliance will rub off on me. Aaron Sorkin (Sports Night), Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), and Joss Wheadon (Firefly, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
This time I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have this thing about television on DVD. I can't just pick up a DVD an watch one episode, esspecially not one in the middle. I have to start with episode #1 and then over the course of several days, or in the case of a series like Buffy that ran seven seasons, over the course of weeks or months, I watch every episode, in order. So, I've been watching it for a while and it's on my mind.
I have always had an issue with Willow's identity as a lesbian. You see, Willow's first love was a boy, Xander and her second love was also a boy, Oz. Never in the history of literature, film or television has there been a more perfect couple than OZ and Willow. Star crossed, surely, in some ways (he's a wherewolf for one), but perfect none the less. Their's was the ultimate romantic courtship.
Oz knew the first time he laid eyes on Willow, in her head to toe furry Eskimo costume, that she was the one for him. Of course, at that point she was still in love with her best friend (Xander, also a boy). None the less, Oz and Willow began cautiously dating and they hit some obstacles. Oz became a wherewolf and he had to be sure that Willow was really over Xander which took some time. Even though Willow had Oz, she kind of freaked when she found out that Xander had been getting busy with Cordelia in the broom closet.
In that episode Willow asks Oz if he wants to make out:
Willow: (after a pause) Do you wanna make out with me?
Oz: What?
Willow: (looks away) Forget it. I'm sorry. (decides she wants to know) Well, do you?
Oz: Sometimes when I'm sitting in class... You know, I'm not thinking about class, 'cause that would never happen. I think about kissing you. And it's like everything stops. It's like, it's like freeze frame. Willow kissage.
(He nods his head and smiles to himself. Willow smiles over at him. He looks up at her.)
Oz: Oh, I'm not gonna kiss you.
Willow: (confused) What? But freeze frame!
Oz: Well, to the casual observer, it would appear that you're trying to make your friend Xander jealous or even the score or something. And that's on the empty side. (looks off into space) See, in my fantasy when I'm kissing *you*, you're kissing *me*. (looks back at her) It's okay. I can wait.
Oz and Xander are both wonderful guys, and she loves them both a lot, both in many different ways for many different reasons, all of which is well established through both dialoge and action in the show, and neither of these are purely cerebral or emotional attractions.
Oz and Willow finally do kiss, and become a solid couple, but she betrays him with Xander. When Xander and Willow see each other in formal wear they suddenly can't keep their hands off each other. It's a sudden, and physical attraction, and they try to fight it, but they can't and ultimately Cordelia and Oz catch them in a compromising position. And later when Oz has forgiven her (a great scene by the way in which Oz says, "This is what I do know: I miss you. Like, every second. Almost like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso. So, I think I'd be willing to... give it a shot") she's all over him again. When they have sex for the first time she says it's the best night of her life.
The beautiful love of Oz and Willow was tragically cut short by Seth Green's desire to do other kinds of work. While I wish he'd stayed on the show, because he was my favorite character at that point, his leaving was one of the best scenes ever in the show, in fact one of the best scenes of any show. You see, Oz has to leave to tame the wolf that lives inside him, it only comes out at the full moon, but it's always there. He had to go, and Willow, even though she caught him in a compromising position earlier in the episode, doesn't want him to go. She asks him how he can leave, doesn't he love her, and he says that his whole life he's never loved anything else. To me it's more tragic than any other story. Usually in a tragic love story, one or both people die in the end, but here you have two people (or a person and a wherewolf) who love each other more than anything and he has to have the will to leave because if he stays he'll become something that will destory that love (and possibly kill a bunch of people).
That episode has a lot of Willow and Oz in bed together, or references to Willow and Oz in bed together and she seems pretty keen on it. Not the image of a suppressed lesbian, if you ask me.
The thing is, I didn't have a problem with her relationship with Tara. After Oz left, Willow was crushed and it took a long time for her to fully recover. One of the things that helped her finally snap out of it was Tara. Willow fell in love with Tara, she loved Tara just as much as she'd loved Oz and they had great chemistry together. At that point I have to believe that Willow is a girl who puts a premium on love and doesn't care one way or the other if it's with a boy or girl and that was believable.
Willow and Tara's love was also tragically cut short though and in season seven a new love interest was introduced for Willow. Her name was Kennedy and Willow liked her a lot, but didn't really love her, they didn't have a courtship at all. They had one episode in which Willow felt guilty (about killing the guy who'd killed Tara, and about moving on) and, like in a fairy tale, kissing Kennedy brought her back from the brink. But honestly, she looked uncomfortable every time she kissed Kennedy and I don't think that's bad acting. I mean, yes, the actress that played Willow is straight, but she never had a problem making me believe that she loved Tara and liked kissing her. She's a good actress, but it wasn't there in the material she was given. The love that she'd had for Xander, and Oz, and Tara, that was well established, had not been established with Kennedy.
Maybe, while she'd been physically attracted to both Oz and Xander and had loved them both, she found that she preferred women more in general after having a relationship with one and maybe after three such intense loves she just wanted to have a little fun but I didn't see that on screen.
It's true that if you're writing for film and television you can leave some things in the hands of your actors, or the casting agents. Probably if, in casting Kennedy, they'd put more focus on having actresses read with Alysson Hannigan they might have found someone who she had better chemistry with and that chemistry would have been enough to justify their attraction to each other. However, if the actors don't have any chemistry with each other, and they can both be great actors and still have no chemistry, then the onus is on the writer to show why those two characters are drawn to each other. The story has to justify the attraction if the actors have no chemistry, and in the case of Willow and Kennedy the story didn't do it's job. Since she had two clearly great loves that were boys and only one that was a girl and she never looked very comfortable with the one girl she was with after that, she seems to me, a bit like an Anne Heche type lesbian (i.e. someone who, after years of heterosexuality, happened to fall in love with a woman but who just as easily falls in love with men or, basically, she's bisexual).
Clearly I put the blame firmly on the writers' shoulders but maybe I'm too hard on them. Maybe I'm too hard on myself as well. Maybe I should be writing something whether inspiration has hit me or not. Maybe it doesn't have to be good it just has to keep me going. The project I'm working on now, that I've been working on for going on 9 months now and it's gone through several drafts, I started because it was national novel writing month and I didn't want to write a novel (didn't think I could), but I liked the idea of writing something just for the sake of writing, quantity over quality. Like athletes who train in the off season, they don't train at their regular level, they aren't out to set records, but they have to keep in shape. If that was the spirit I started writing in maybe that's the spirit I should continue in.
This time I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have this thing about television on DVD. I can't just pick up a DVD an watch one episode, esspecially not one in the middle. I have to start with episode #1 and then over the course of several days, or in the case of a series like Buffy that ran seven seasons, over the course of weeks or months, I watch every episode, in order. So, I've been watching it for a while and it's on my mind.
I have always had an issue with Willow's identity as a lesbian. You see, Willow's first love was a boy, Xander and her second love was also a boy, Oz. Never in the history of literature, film or television has there been a more perfect couple than OZ and Willow. Star crossed, surely, in some ways (he's a wherewolf for one), but perfect none the less. Their's was the ultimate romantic courtship.
Oz knew the first time he laid eyes on Willow, in her head to toe furry Eskimo costume, that she was the one for him. Of course, at that point she was still in love with her best friend (Xander, also a boy). None the less, Oz and Willow began cautiously dating and they hit some obstacles. Oz became a wherewolf and he had to be sure that Willow was really over Xander which took some time. Even though Willow had Oz, she kind of freaked when she found out that Xander had been getting busy with Cordelia in the broom closet.
In that episode Willow asks Oz if he wants to make out:
Willow: (after a pause) Do you wanna make out with me?
Oz: What?
Willow: (looks away) Forget it. I'm sorry. (decides she wants to know) Well, do you?
Oz: Sometimes when I'm sitting in class... You know, I'm not thinking about class, 'cause that would never happen. I think about kissing you. And it's like everything stops. It's like, it's like freeze frame. Willow kissage.
(He nods his head and smiles to himself. Willow smiles over at him. He looks up at her.)
Oz: Oh, I'm not gonna kiss you.
Willow: (confused) What? But freeze frame!
Oz: Well, to the casual observer, it would appear that you're trying to make your friend Xander jealous or even the score or something. And that's on the empty side. (looks off into space) See, in my fantasy when I'm kissing *you*, you're kissing *me*. (looks back at her) It's okay. I can wait.
Oz and Xander are both wonderful guys, and she loves them both a lot, both in many different ways for many different reasons, all of which is well established through both dialoge and action in the show, and neither of these are purely cerebral or emotional attractions.
Oz and Willow finally do kiss, and become a solid couple, but she betrays him with Xander. When Xander and Willow see each other in formal wear they suddenly can't keep their hands off each other. It's a sudden, and physical attraction, and they try to fight it, but they can't and ultimately Cordelia and Oz catch them in a compromising position. And later when Oz has forgiven her (a great scene by the way in which Oz says, "This is what I do know: I miss you. Like, every second. Almost like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso. So, I think I'd be willing to... give it a shot") she's all over him again. When they have sex for the first time she says it's the best night of her life.
The beautiful love of Oz and Willow was tragically cut short by Seth Green's desire to do other kinds of work. While I wish he'd stayed on the show, because he was my favorite character at that point, his leaving was one of the best scenes ever in the show, in fact one of the best scenes of any show. You see, Oz has to leave to tame the wolf that lives inside him, it only comes out at the full moon, but it's always there. He had to go, and Willow, even though she caught him in a compromising position earlier in the episode, doesn't want him to go. She asks him how he can leave, doesn't he love her, and he says that his whole life he's never loved anything else. To me it's more tragic than any other story. Usually in a tragic love story, one or both people die in the end, but here you have two people (or a person and a wherewolf) who love each other more than anything and he has to have the will to leave because if he stays he'll become something that will destory that love (and possibly kill a bunch of people).
That episode has a lot of Willow and Oz in bed together, or references to Willow and Oz in bed together and she seems pretty keen on it. Not the image of a suppressed lesbian, if you ask me.
The thing is, I didn't have a problem with her relationship with Tara. After Oz left, Willow was crushed and it took a long time for her to fully recover. One of the things that helped her finally snap out of it was Tara. Willow fell in love with Tara, she loved Tara just as much as she'd loved Oz and they had great chemistry together. At that point I have to believe that Willow is a girl who puts a premium on love and doesn't care one way or the other if it's with a boy or girl and that was believable.
Willow and Tara's love was also tragically cut short though and in season seven a new love interest was introduced for Willow. Her name was Kennedy and Willow liked her a lot, but didn't really love her, they didn't have a courtship at all. They had one episode in which Willow felt guilty (about killing the guy who'd killed Tara, and about moving on) and, like in a fairy tale, kissing Kennedy brought her back from the brink. But honestly, she looked uncomfortable every time she kissed Kennedy and I don't think that's bad acting. I mean, yes, the actress that played Willow is straight, but she never had a problem making me believe that she loved Tara and liked kissing her. She's a good actress, but it wasn't there in the material she was given. The love that she'd had for Xander, and Oz, and Tara, that was well established, had not been established with Kennedy.
Maybe, while she'd been physically attracted to both Oz and Xander and had loved them both, she found that she preferred women more in general after having a relationship with one and maybe after three such intense loves she just wanted to have a little fun but I didn't see that on screen.
It's true that if you're writing for film and television you can leave some things in the hands of your actors, or the casting agents. Probably if, in casting Kennedy, they'd put more focus on having actresses read with Alysson Hannigan they might have found someone who she had better chemistry with and that chemistry would have been enough to justify their attraction to each other. However, if the actors don't have any chemistry with each other, and they can both be great actors and still have no chemistry, then the onus is on the writer to show why those two characters are drawn to each other. The story has to justify the attraction if the actors have no chemistry, and in the case of Willow and Kennedy the story didn't do it's job. Since she had two clearly great loves that were boys and only one that was a girl and she never looked very comfortable with the one girl she was with after that, she seems to me, a bit like an Anne Heche type lesbian (i.e. someone who, after years of heterosexuality, happened to fall in love with a woman but who just as easily falls in love with men or, basically, she's bisexual).
Clearly I put the blame firmly on the writers' shoulders but maybe I'm too hard on them. Maybe I'm too hard on myself as well. Maybe I should be writing something whether inspiration has hit me or not. Maybe it doesn't have to be good it just has to keep me going. The project I'm working on now, that I've been working on for going on 9 months now and it's gone through several drafts, I started because it was national novel writing month and I didn't want to write a novel (didn't think I could), but I liked the idea of writing something just for the sake of writing, quantity over quality. Like athletes who train in the off season, they don't train at their regular level, they aren't out to set records, but they have to keep in shape. If that was the spirit I started writing in maybe that's the spirit I should continue in.
posted by Beth at
6:51 AM
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