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Emptying the Future (BtVS metameta)
Feb. 27th, 2019 04:04 pmOkay, imma just say this straight (lol) out: I'm queer, and I was hella confused reading this article.
There was a particular point that resonated with me (see quote below*): the idea that a lot of modern representations of queer characters tend to assimilate them into relatively "undiverse" heteronormative worlds. I'm not super sure how I feel about this trend -- on one hand, it might be more realistic or help to negate some of the stereotypes associated with being queer ("The Gays (TM)... they're just like us!"); on the other hand, is this absorption of queer characters into only one kind of social narrative denigrating to queer culture? It reminds me a bit of how a friend of mine (also queer) thought that the show "Queer Eye" wasn't actually all too progressive; she argued that it commercialized gay culture to a non-queer audience, presenting queer-identifying individuals as being present to solve problems for straight people.
* "Buffy defies the late-twentieth-century American visual politics through which queerness was rendered compatible with bourgeois heterosexual values and consumer capitalism...In contrast to those programmes, which portray their LGBT subjects as being isolated in static straight worlds, Buffy illustrates the power of queerness to reject assimilation and to insist on the reality and accessibility of alternative social formations" (Keegan 11)
Later in the paper, during discussion of "Hush," Keegan argues that "the scene of Willow and Buffy wandering down a street occupied by a silent yet turbulently disordered society is an ideal illustration of how the rational discourse of heteronormativity is, in reality, a repressive regime" (18). In this episode, lack of communication actually brings about a lot of change in the show's several relationships. Xander and Anya become closer, Buffy and Riley finally kiss (and also find out their respective identities), Giles and Olivia become estranged again, and (of course) Tillow is introduced. I'm not really sure what the significance of The Gentlemen being coded as effeminate is, but it is interesting to consider how the effective "silencing" of the (presumably) non-queer characters (since the queer characters are already "silenced" by virtue of not adhering to social norms) leads to a certain amount of liberation to everyone.
There was a particular point that resonated with me (see quote below*): the idea that a lot of modern representations of queer characters tend to assimilate them into relatively "undiverse" heteronormative worlds. I'm not super sure how I feel about this trend -- on one hand, it might be more realistic or help to negate some of the stereotypes associated with being queer ("The Gays (TM)... they're just like us!"); on the other hand, is this absorption of queer characters into only one kind of social narrative denigrating to queer culture? It reminds me a bit of how a friend of mine (also queer) thought that the show "Queer Eye" wasn't actually all too progressive; she argued that it commercialized gay culture to a non-queer audience, presenting queer-identifying individuals as being present to solve problems for straight people.
* "Buffy defies the late-twentieth-century American visual politics through which queerness was rendered compatible with bourgeois heterosexual values and consumer capitalism...In contrast to those programmes, which portray their LGBT subjects as being isolated in static straight worlds, Buffy illustrates the power of queerness to reject assimilation and to insist on the reality and accessibility of alternative social formations" (Keegan 11)
Later in the paper, during discussion of "Hush," Keegan argues that "the scene of Willow and Buffy wandering down a street occupied by a silent yet turbulently disordered society is an ideal illustration of how the rational discourse of heteronormativity is, in reality, a repressive regime" (18). In this episode, lack of communication actually brings about a lot of change in the show's several relationships. Xander and Anya become closer, Buffy and Riley finally kiss (and also find out their respective identities), Giles and Olivia become estranged again, and (of course) Tillow is introduced. I'm not really sure what the significance of The Gentlemen being coded as effeminate is, but it is interesting to consider how the effective "silencing" of the (presumably) non-queer characters (since the queer characters are already "silenced" by virtue of not adhering to social norms) leads to a certain amount of liberation to everyone.
But then there are lines like "Buffy, therefore, defends notions of democratic sociality through its melodramatic deployment of queer negativity as a utopian force" (12). I'm sorry, what?
