In the book of essays
Seven Seasons of Buffy (ed. by Glenn Yeffeth), Charlaine Harris (of
True Blood fame) writes, "The monsters [in
Buffy] are all evil. The good guys are all pretty" ("A Reflection on Ugliness"). Whedon, she argues, "uses physical attractiveness to signal moral decay."
I disagree; I also consider Harris contradicts her arguments in her own books. I'll deal with the first point, then the second.
Yes, it is true that, as Harris writes, "when the completely transformed monster's true evil nature comes to the fore," the demons in Whedon's universe transform, gaining vamp faces or serpents' bodies, etc. However, Harris' reasoning that Whedon uses these transformations because he equates ugliness with evil (or wants to make evil obvious) is unreasonable.
Here's why:
1.
Harris sees the Buffy demons as ugly; that doesn't mean everybody does. Granted, the vamp faces in early
Buffy are a bit cheesy, but the make-up improves and, if anything, vampires in eat-mode achieve the same coolness level as the Wraith. Okay, I happen to think the Wraith are the coolest looking bad guys ever on television, so . . . maybe not. Still--Whedon's vampires have their own cache of wowness as do the other bad guys: I'm not too hip on bugs (
Teacher's Pet), but I do think serpents are very awesome (Glory,
Graduation Day: Part 2).
I also happen to be a big fan of Armin Shimmerman, who Harris cites as an example of an ugly bad guy. Really? He's about as adorable as a principal can get--and he has all the good lines. ("There are things I will not tolerate. Students loitering on campus after school. Horrible murders with hearts being removed. And also smoking.")
Harris attempts to use Count Dracula as a counter-argument--sure, he's cute, but he isn't THAT cute. Dracula, by the way, is Rudolf Martin who would look good if he were dying of plague--not much of a counter-argument.
I do agree with Harris that the worst of the bad guys is Warren who never transforms. Harris perceives this as a sign that "Whedon's view is growing more sophisticated" (Warren is the main bad guy for Season 6). She misses the fact that Warren isn't a demon. In Whedon's universe, the supernatural bad guys are demons who have robbed human souls. Sure, humans may regard them as ugly (though that's inconclusive), but
that does not mean the demons do. To borrow an example from the first season (before Whedon became "sophisticated," Hollywood help him), the Master makes it clear that as far as he is concerned, humans are annoying and whining and just so darn pudding faced. He and his loyal Luke, of the lovely deep voice, never change.
I would agree that Oz's werewolf is disgusting, but I think that's more bad make-up and the inability to hire REAL wolves (which are probably more expensive than human actors) than any specific statement about ugliness and evil. In any case, nobody but Kane (
Phases) considers Oz a bad guy in his monster state, and Willow doesn't seem to have much problem adjusting to his "other" self.
There are at least three other indications--one of which Harris brushes over, the others of which she misses--that the "good guys" on Buffy don't always find demons disgusting: when Buffy kisses Angel while in vamp face, and when Giles confronts Buffy's come-alive nightmare of being a vampire. Buffy is ashamed, NOT because she is ugly but because the vamp face reveals one of her deepest fears. With no revulsion whatsoever, Giles looks at her and says gently, "Why didn't you tell me?"
Additionally, when the swim team morphs in
Go Fish, not one of our good guys judges the changed team members as intrinsically evil. Buffy is downright sanguine, putting their animalistic behavior down to their animalistic state. Harris appears to have made the leap from ugliness to evil when no such statement was intended by the writers, but Harris' faulty assumptions are hardly Whedon's fault.
I also must mention that I consider one of the truly good guys, Sid (
The Puppet), to be thoroughly disturbing (not exactly a "pretty" good guy).
2.
Harris argues that Whedon should have recognized that "evil is not so clearly denoted in the real world." She asks, "Wouldn't we learn a more graphic lesson if the monsters retained their more attractive aspects even as they showed their most monstrous behavior?" Yes, we would learn something, especially since that's exactly what Whedon did. Now, I have my own problems with Whedon regarding
Buffy (namely, Seasons 6 & 7), but I don't see the point in accusing him of something he hasn't done. The first episode of
Buffy opens with sweet-faced, pretty Darla luring a teenage boy into the deserted high school. Eh hem, Harris, she certainly didn't do it in vamp mode. True, she changes to vamp mode when she is about to feed, but I'm afraid her victim doesn't have much time to react. The evil has been accomplished long before Darla changes.
Likewise, bad Angel stalks and seduces women with his "golly, gee, whillikers shucks" act multiple times and his friendliness on those occasions is terrifying
precisely because the viewer knows that this is bad Angel but Angel's victims-to-be do not. Likewise, Ted's behavior (
Ted) is far more terrifying before we--and Buffy--learn he is a robot (and, therefore, beatable). Granted, the wonderfully slimy mayor transforms at the end of Season 3, but there is such a thing as making a show exciting to watch. Besides, who can pass up a huge snake going, "Well, gosh" over a pile of dynamite?
Over and over again, the villains of
Buffy use prettiness to obtain their ends; they also, I would argue, commit more vile acts in their pretty states than as demons (the mayor's seduction of Faith is far more vile than anything he does, briefly, as a snake). This is backed by the fact that Buffy can sense vampires long before they change (by their bad clothing in one case but intuitively in many other cases).The transformations, quite frankly, appear to be more for the sake of fun than for the sake of making moral declarations.
This brings me to the end of my problems with Harris' essay. I would still have disagreed with her essay if I hadn't known her name. As it is, I have read several of Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. In fact, when I first opened
Seven Seasons of Buffy, I wanted to read Harris' essay because I had read her novels.
I was somewhat surprised by her essay. It wasn't until I read the fifth book in the Sookie Stackhouse series that I realized Harris may have no idea how completely at variance her criticism of
Buffy is with the messages of her own work.
To back up: I do understand where Harris is coming from psychologically. I happen to find discussions over appearance rather distasteful. I was one of those unfortunate weedy teens with bad acne, and it took me a long time to realize that although teens, and some adults, will make fun of bad acne, even teens will respond to the unfortunate's sense of personal authority. If you act coy and ashamed, people will pick up on it. If you don't, they tend to respond to your sense of confidence.
Still, I've never shaken my distaste for discussions about people's clothes or skin care or weight. I'm one of those lucky people with a good metabolism and great genes who has to practice exactly zero discipline to maintain a decent weight. I believe this makes me completely unqualified to pass judgment on any one who does have to practice discipline and self-restraint to meet their weight goals.
This is all to say that I understand where Harris is coming from in her essay. It is also to explain why I stopped reading her books: I found her obsession with appearance distasteful.
To return to Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series: Sookie is a nice, average looking (pretty but not glamorous), normally weighted young woman who encounters vampires in her neighborhood near New Orleans. She is telepathic but otherwise fulfills the respectable role of so many suspense/mystery heroines: the good girl next door who finds herself in extraordinary circumstances.
Extraordinary circumstances that involve her being ogled by a truly stunning number of men.
Before I continue, I should state that the books are great examples of modern fantasy writing; they combine an underground world of vampires and fairies, etc. with the everyday work-a-day world. One reason I stayed with the books as long as I did, other than the ebullient Eric, was the layered world created by Harris--something I find extremely difficult to do in my own writing and always admire in other people's work.
In book 5, however, Harris begins to head Sookie down a path that so many female suspense/mystery writers seemed compelled to take: the Road of Multiple Suitors. I can only surmise, based on the
Twilight series' existence and success, that female writers and their readers enjoy fantasizing a princess-quest allotment of suitors for their heroines. Too many female-written mysteries contain if not several suitors, at least two who vie, unceasingly, for the heroine's attention. I have no very high opinion of the heroines and almost no opinion of the suitors (get a life already, people).
At least Buffy only had two obsessed suitors; they occurred at different times; and Whedon did not disguise his belief that both relationships were doomed. And during those relationships, Buffy had no problem assessing what she wanted and didn't want (however confused she was over Spike, and no matter how badly the writers handled the relationship, Buffy is
very clear that she doesn't want to be in a permanent relationship with Spike).
However, Sookie belongs to that echelon of female heroines who don't believe in their own prettiness. When dealing with glamorous women, said heroines (1) befriend them, thus rendering the glamorous women clawless; (2) despise them because said glamorous women are also snotty; or (3) feel dowdy in comparison at which point a suitor's ogling will reassure our heroine that she is quite attractive.
My feminism rebels.
Give me an indifferent heroine or a heroine who knows her attractions and flaunts them over a heroine who isn't into her appearance but happens to be pretty anyway
and whose writer never lets you forget the fact. Give me Samantha Carter or Seven of Nine or Teyla (all completely unapologetic gorgeous women). I'll take Captain Janeway, who is largely indifferent to her appearance (except her hair), or any of the doctors from
House. Give me Scully, who is so wonderful to watch, being so fastidious in her dress and so consumed with her personal interests (and Mulder). Give me Buffy who worries about her appearance but doesn't try to tuck it away!
Spare me the heroine who will say she isn't pretty but has plenty of supporting cast characters to show/tell her exactly how sexy they think she is.
In Book 5,
Dead as a Doornail, Sookie goes to clean out a dead relative's apartment. While there, we, the readers, are presented with 2,000 reasons why Sookie MUST, against her own inclinations, wear skin-tight lycra pants (those pants people wear to gyms). I don't remember all the reasons--something about the cousin being a smaller size and not owning any sweats and Sookie not having a car or, I can only assume, the wherewithall to call a cab (perhaps she doesn't have any money either; I forget) let alone time to go to Walmart and buy some sweatpants. We are presented with a trillion excuses--that any reasonable adult would be able to circumvent with reasonable ease--that force Sookie into wearing the lycra pants, which, we are assured, isn't typical of her. She doesn't usually go around showing off her body like that, not because she is old-fashioned and modest, you understand, but because it isn't how she sees herself.
But *oh, a woman's burden* she puts them on anyway and then proceeds to go out into the apartment's main living area where two of her current oglers, sorry, suitors are stationed and, presumably forgetting they are there, bends over to put her hair into a twist or a ponytail or something. And when she straightens up, well, wouldn't you know, they are staring at her. Obviously, those horny men were checking out her . . . wink wink nudge nudge.
But Sookie isn't the kind of girl to flaunt her stuff, because, you know, she doesn't think she's, like, all that gorgeous or stuff, and Harris certainly isn't totally, like, obsessed with people's appearances. (Sorry, the whole thing is just so . . . teenagerish.)
I finished the book; I've never picked up another (that's not true; I pick them up at the library and read the ends to see if anything has changed in Sookie's universe--does she have another suitor yet?).
Talk about pure Victorianism; the idea of the devouring gaze is, I believe, a Victorian concept. Well, maybe, it's a medieval one. But the linking of coy physicality and ogling men is pure Victorianism. The medievals, at least, didn't make it so creepy.
I considered the modern, female mystery/suspense version of the devouring gaze creepy. Not the lycra pants, you understand. I would have applauded a Sookie who put them on because she didn't want to run to Walmart and didn't care what she wore OR a Sookie who thought, "I've got a darn fine body. I'm gonna go flaunt it!"
What I find creepy is the way the reader in this and similar type mystery series is constantly reminded that the heroine, who maintains an ingenue innocence (she never actually engages with the impact of her appearance--it's all happening to somebody else), is desired by many somebodies and usually, moreover, many handsome somebodies.
Case in point: I recently picked up a Kerry Greenwood novel. Kerry Greenwood is an Australian writer who produced the Phryne Fisher mysteries, an interesting series although the writing varies from horrible to quite good.
Greenwood has currently come out with a new series with a heroine, Corinna Chapman, who is an unrepentantly size-large baker. She certainly isn't into all that model-type starving that her assistants practice. Nope, that's not her style. Take her as she is.
And I respect that. I
like that attitude in people. Except Corinna has a handsome boyfriend with a washboard stomach about which the reader is reminded
incessantly.
No reason why she shouldn't have a handsome boyfriend with a washboard stomach except it fits into my current beef with Harris and all female mystery writers who play this particular game. For instance, in the mysteries with two suitors, one suitor will sometimes be a bit homely (the best friend the heroine grew up with), but the other suitor will
always be a hunk;
neither suitor will be especially nerdy or especially plain or an especially bad kisser or especially plump.
So, the heroines of these series aren't obsessed with appearance, but can the
writers truly claim they are not?
Doesn't look like it.
BOOKS
