Tag: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Posted on by — Leave a comment

thinky thoughts Thursday

I have had a number of thinky thoughts swirling in my head this week, ranging from ideas about gardening as a metaphor for living to notions about gun control, the medical industry, the fact that medicine IS an industry, the right to live, transgender children and so much more.

None of them have tumbled out whole yet though, so maybe I’ll just swirl them around a bit more.

While I do that, lets do a little navel gazing, shall we?

As an author, I like to pay attention to things being said in the world of books, from buzz about new or upcoming releases, new authors making their debut, books that are “banned” or panned or otherwise talked about.

And, as a fairly liberal minded soul seeking genuine equality/equity, but also understanding that we continue to evolve as a society, I am open to reinterpreting old ways to eliminate or preface things that we now see as troubling or problematic.

So, I support Disney prefacing movies with notes about the climate in which they were created, and not letting children just consume a movie that might have problematic content without engaging parents in the conversation.

And I support a publisher’s decision to pull books from publication due to problematic/racist depictions, even if the author is much beloved. As we have seen a lot in recent years, even people who we adore are not perfect.

So, it is with Dr. Seuss. He wasn’t the perfect children’s author we want him to be. He was a man of his times, and those times and his beliefs colored the work he did. The books that his estate has chosen to stop publishing are still available, if you can find them. They never were big hits, so I imagine even before they stopped producing them they were not easy to locate.

We do have to face the dilemma of what to do with problem people when we love their work, but can not abide something about them. How do you separate the love of all things Harry Potter and the anti-trans stance of the author? How do you continue to hold on to the love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when you discover that the creator is an abusive asshole? How do you hold onto childhood memories with affection when you discover that Dr. Seuss, Laura Ingalls Wilder and others were racist?

I guess that’s something we each have to decide for ourselves.

Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash

Posted on by — 2 Comments

the problem with heroes

More and more, I’ve been challenged by those I once admired, the people I found talented and intelligent and provided me with entertainment. I don’t need everyone to agree with my personal opinions, but when their “opinions” prove to be problematic…when they are not so much about what they believe, but about human beings, about treating people like human beings, when their behavior shows me that they are not good people, it throws me into a whirlwind of emotions.

I always have trouble separating the hateful ways they speak and behave from their characters or their creations. For some actors I have completely written them off and I can’t watch anything of theirs. Kevin Spacey and Adam Baldwin are two that come to mind.

Recently we’ve learned things about others that have me in the same mind-frame. Gina Carano falls into this category for me. J.K. Rowling is another. And most recently, Joss Whedon. These last two were harder hitting for me, because they are not actors. They are not people who I can just say, they suck and I won’t watch their work anymore.

Why?

Because both have created worlds that stand without them now. Worlds that live inside me, if you know what I mean. While I was older than the target audience for Buffy, there was something about it that spoke to a deep need inside of me. It went beyond “girl power” or the teenage angst. It had to do with the personal relationships, the characters who were more than just caricatures of high school kids and the relationships built on shared experience.

There was something about watching the “kids” grow up, seeing friendships grow and change that felt real to me. To this day, I re-watch the entire show every few years.

To find out now about the way Joss treated women, despite his public stance about writing strong women, is heartbreaking. The same kind of heartbreak that came when Rowling started being anti-trans.

I could let that heartbreak tarnish the things they created, the things that comfort me and bring me joy. Or I can divorce them from those things. I can relegate them to the side of things where I no longer spend money on what they create, where I no longer interact with anything new they create, where I do my part to ensure that the people who might pay them for things know that their audience is reduced due to their behavior.

But what I won’t do? I won’t let them steal the things that Buffy or Harry Potter mean to me. They live on beyond the bad actions of those who created them. The characters, and the actors who embody them, live outside of that world now.

The problem with heroes is that all too often we forget that, like us, they are human beings. Fallible. Filled with contradictions. Capable of good and bad. And just because they do something that we like doesn’t mean that they are perfect or worthy of adulation.

It isn’t cancel culture to hold people accountable for the things that they do and the things that they say. In fact, I think that what it is, is a sign that society is maturing to a degree. We’ve learned. We’re changing for the better (I hope)…and that growth is not going to be easy, and we will have to keep fighting and keep the growth safe against the backlash of the dying society we want to leave behind and their death-flails.

We need to come to a place of true equality, and equity for all, without regard to their gender, their physical sex, their skin color, their religion or their sexuality. Part of getting there is necessarily letting those who won’t join the journey fall to the wayside.

Love what you love, Readers, and keep growing past those who hate and mistreat others.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

welcome to the future

Do you remember when 2021 seemed like the distant future, impossible to fathom as anything than other a dystopian post-apocalyptic world filled with robber barons and highwaymen?

And yet, here we are. Then again, 2020 was something of an apocalypse and the world is lilting ever more toward dystopia.

In the enduring words of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode “Where do we go from here”?

It seems to me that our choices are to continue to devolve until our society is fractured, we need heavy weaponry just to get enough food to eat and we go to war over petty differences or we find some duct tape and start patching this shit back together.

Of course, patches don’t hold forever, which might actually be part of how we got where we are. If we want to do more than hold on to the status quo, we’re going to need to build something new. What does that look like?

Well, I know what I would like to see. I want a society that takes care of its most vulnerable, where each person enters life on a level playing field, where no one dies because they can’t afford to see a doctor, where basic human rights are respected and honored, where everyone pays their fair share and the government curtails things that threaten our existence (pollution, greed, unfair business practices).

How do we get there? If I knew that, I’d run for office. Well, no, I wouldn’t because I’m an agoraphobic introvert. But, you know what I mean. I do know that we never will get there if we can’t come to a place where our political dialog is not bogged down by the fundamental issues we have right now, where one half of the country wants to destroy anyone who is different than them (whether that difference is gender, sexual orientation, race, financial status or anything else), and the other half wants to destroy the first half.

Until we realize that no one is more equal than another, until we tax corporations and billionaires, until we fund schools, until we realize that healthcare is not a privilege of the rich…until we start to actually care about the other people in this country, patches are all we’re going to get.

We’re living in the future, I just wish it was more Star Trek and less Mad Max. Happy 2021, Readers. Be kind recklessly. Give love unconditionally. Be the change.

Cover Photo by Artem Labunsky on Unsplash