Here ya go... see what you think...
People Are Talking...
A look at some recent quotes from Mutant Enemy
By Robert A. Black
Hello. Yes, it's me again.
When I finished the last of my four essays on the death of Tara, I had a feeling I wasn't quite finished talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There was still some ground left for me to cover. And so I've been following the interviews Joss Whedon and others on the staff at Mutant Enemy have been giving. I've followed the comments people have been making about the first few episodes of the three Mutant Enemy shows. I've been following the lower-than-expected ratings that two of those shows have been receiving so far. However, I hadn't really found enough for me to talk about in all of that. Until now.
In the past week there's been a flurry of new public statements coming from the various writers at Mutant Enemy. It gives us an interesting look at what they're thinking - or at what they'd like us to believe they're thinking, anyway.
Throwing around the "H" word
Did you know that I'm a homophobe? Let me tell you, it was news to me. Who would have guessed that the many thousands of words I've written decrying the death of Tara had the dark specter of homophobia lurking at their roots? It boggles the mind.
And yet that's what Buffy writer Drew Greenberg would have me believe. Here's his reasoning, as posted on the Bronze Beta recently:
| "In characterizing Tara's death as yet another in the string of clichéd lesbian deaths, you indicate that you do not see Tara as anything but a lesbian, you do not see her as the unique character she was, but rather just as a woman who had sex with women, and, in doing so, you reveal your own homophobia, your own prejudice and, more than anything else, your own lack of understanding of what we did with that character." |
What are we to make of this? My first thought is that Mr. Greenberg is playing a polysyllabic version of "I know you are, but what am I?" You're familiar with the game, aren't you? One child calls another a nasty name, and the other child responds with, "I know you are, but what am I?" My brother and sister and I thought it was great fun - 25 or 30 years ago. We've outgrown it since then.
Of course, as I remember the rules, you can only say "I know you are, but what am I?" after you've actually been called a name. Mr. Greenberg is calling those who criticize Tara's death homophobes, but nobody that I know of called him a homophobe first. In fact, I've spent large portions of all my essays very specifically pointing out that I didn't think anyone at Mutant Enemy was homophobic. Other writers have done the same. If Mutant Enemy wants to perpetuate the false claim that they're being accused of homophobia, it can only be because they don't want to talk about the real issues.
But let's backtrack a minute and look at what else Mr. Greenberg had to say. He made some interesting comments about "the lesbian cliché," a topic I've brought up before and others have explored in great depth.
| "Presentations of lesbians in film and television have historically presented these women as troubled, twisted and desperate. They were not accepted by society, and the only appropriate ending for them was either to be killed or to commit suicide, thus denying these characters any chance at happiness and, also, providing for the audience a rather clean solution to an embarrassing problem -- how to get rid of the lesbian. In the character of Tara, we carefully constructed a young woman who was vibrant, alive, self-sufficient, funny, sexy, compassionate, strong and learning to stand on her own two feet. We wanted you to love her so that when we took her away, the audience would feel her absence as something painful, just as Willow did, and absolutely NOT as a relief, as the cliché holds. The character was, in my opinion, in stark contrast to and the exact opposite of the old lesbian cliché." |
That may sound learned and impressive, but let's take a close look. Note that Mr. Greenberg says that Tara was the opposite of the old lesbian cliché. The problem with his argument is that times have changed, and the way lesbians are portrayed in Hollywood has changed - in all ways but one. Consider the following relatively recent examples:
- 1992 - In the Northern Exposure episode, "Cicely," the lesbian characters Cicely and Rosalyn were held up as the paragons of virtue and praised as the heroines who had turned the town of Cicely, Alaska, into "the Paris of the North." And yet that didn't stop the show from killing Cicely and telling us that Rosalyn spent the rest of her life in loneliness.
- 1995 - In the Babylon 5 episode "Divided Loyalties," Talia Winters, an important, respected and well-liked character, suffered a "death of personality" the day after a night of lesbian sex with Susan Ivanova. We later find out that her life ended on a PsiCorps dissection table.
- 1997 - In the NYPD Blue episode "Three Girls and a Baby," recurring lesbian character Abby Sullivan and her life-partner Kathy are celebrating the news of Abby's pregnancy when Abby's ex-lover arrives on the scene and shoots them both. Both Abby and Kathy are good women, and are well-liked. The sperm that impregnated Abby even came from a regular character on the show. Yet at the end of the episode, Kathy is dead and Abby is left bereaved. The final scorecard reads one lesbian dead, one lesbian evil and one lesbian alone - a result some viewers have dubbed "the lesbian cliché trifecta."
None of these cases fit what Mr. Greenberg defines as "the lesbian cliché," and neither does the death of Tara. But they all have one thing in common with the cases Mr. Greenberg has in mind - they all feature dead characters who were involved in lesbian relationships.
What we're looking at here reminds me of the road African-Americans have traveled in Hollywood. At first, the only African-American characters to appear in the movies were servants waiting on white people. Many years later, African-American characters began appearing in war movies and horror movies working side-by-side with white characters, seemingly as equals - but whenever the action heated up, the African-American characters were always the ones to be killed off. The unequal treatment of African-American characters hadn't gone away - the method of unequal treatment had simply changed. The old cliché had been replaced by a new one. And so it is with lesbians today.
Even if you don't believe that a "lesbian cliché" exists, a simple look at the three examples I've cited tells you that Mutant Enemy was hardly being original when they decided to make a lesbian character sympathetic and then kill her. It's something that's been done repeatedly for at least the past ten years. You may not think of it as a "lesbian cliché," but it's still a cliché.
"Individuals, not lesbians" revisited
Let's take another look at Mr. Greenberg's post, and examine the pretzel-logic that accuses people who wish Tara was alive of being homophobic. It's rooted in the nonsensical claim that has been Mutant Enemy's first line of defense for several months now - the claim that they "treated Willow and Tara as individuals, not as lesbians."
What exactly does that mean? Isn't it possible to be both an individual and a lesbian? Does one give up being an individual by becoming a lesbian? If so, then someone had better warn Ellen Degeneres and Rosie O'Donnell, because I don't think they knew that before they came out.
Even if we could make sense of this argument, what good does it do? Tara is still dead. Imagine for a moment that there was some kind of afterlife for fictional characters, and that we could peer into it and find Tara there. Would she be resting any more comfortably because she had been killed by writers who were treating her as an "individual?" Perhaps she would be saying to herself, "Gee, I've got it much better than all these other dead lesbians up here. The writers who killed them off weren't nearly as enlightened." Somehow, I doubt it.
And what of the thousands of young people worldwide who are struggling with their own sexuality and had looked up to Tara as an example of what they could have for themselves? The fact that Tara was a lesbian as well as an individual gave them hope for their own futures. Perhaps Mr. Greenberg should go explain to them just how much better it is for Tara to be a dead individual than a live lesbian. If they don't agree with him, then maybe he can call all of them homophobes, too.
The fury over Fury
Meanwhile, there's been more trouble for Mutant Enemy elsewhere on the internet. Not long ago, a new Q&A column appeared at David Fury's official fan website, DavidFury.net. It created such a furor among its readers that it was pulled from the site just two days later. A revised version has appeared since then, with "context" added to explain some of Mr. Fury's remarks. Here is a small sample from the original column:
[Allyson, the interviewer]: The Bathroom scene in Seeing Red. "Attempted rape" or "the bitch got what she deserved?" Bonus points for not mentioning what a completely loaded question this is. Fury: Can't both be true? I mean... Rape! Definitely rape! A: Given that there's been so much backlash in the fandom about the tone of Season Six, how come you writer types still give us the love? Fury: Uh... what makes you think we still do? I mean... Rape! Rape rape rape! Plain and simple. (Stop looking at me like that.) |
In the added context section, Allyson describes the long-running feud that Mr. Fury has had with some of Buffy's fans, a feud that exploded in the wake of Spike's attempt to rape Buffy in the episode "Seeing Red" - coincidentally, the same episode in which Tara was killed.
Allyson explains:
| "For the next five months, some fans of the character Spike, denied that he tried to rape her. Not ALL fans of the character, but enough very vocal fans to keep a Summer-long debate going. I saw posts at the UPN posting board that 'Buffy was a bitch, she deserved it,' hence the phrasing of my question. I saw posts that 'Buffy liked rough sex, so how was Spike supposed to know?' The characters had a sexual relation prior to rape, that was drenched in mutual abuse and violence. It was depicted as dark and frightening, yet some fans saw romance and love." |
Regardless of whether or not Mr. Fury's latest remarks can be considered offensive, the fact remains that they wouldn't have been necessary if the Buffy/Spike storyline hadn't been filled with such mixed messages about love, sex, right and wrong.
Note that I'm not saying writers shouldn't tell stories about bad men trying to become good for the sake of the women they love. I've seen the same basic plot done quite successfully on another TV show currently on the air. (I think some people would be mortified if I revealed which show I'm referring to, so I'll just let you guess for yourselves.) It's one thing to fill a story with gray areas and characters who dwell in them. It's quite another thing to confuse the issue so much that characters who commit a crime as violent as rape are defended or even cheered, or where one person can see something "dark and frightening" while another person finds "romance and love" in the very same scene.
The issue over issues
If Mutant Enemy is having trouble keeping the issues straight in their storylines, perhaps it's because they can't seem to agree on whether or not their storylines have any issues. You may recall that over the summer Joss Whedon had this to say to E!Online's Wanda:
| "I never court controversy. I don't really care about issues. I didn't care about the one I introduced with Tara, and I didn't care about the one when I killed her." |
But just a few weeks later, Joss had this to say when talking to the New York Times about Firefly:
| Whedon finds [genre fiction] uniquely forceful: using its vivid strokes, you can be speculative, philosophical -- and create stories that are not merely true to life but are metaphors for a deeper level of human experience. "It's better to be a spy in the house of love, you know?" he jokes. "If I made 'Buffy the Lesbian Separatist,' a series of lectures on PBS on why there should be feminism, no one would be coming to the party, and it would be boring. The idea of changing culture is important to me, and it can only be done in a popular medium." |
So which is it? If Joss thinks the idea of changing culture is important, then how can he say he doesn't care about issues? And if he doesn't care about issues, how can the idea of changing culture be important to him? Has he invented some new way of changing culture that doesn't involve dealing with issues? Now that would be quite a trick.
Marti Noxon has also contradicted Joss's claim that he doesn't care about issues. In an interview with Sci Fi Magazine, she had this to say about Buffy's sixth season:
| "I think in some way last year, there was a little less metaphor and a little more straight-ahead drama. And that may be why people were reacting more to issues, as opposed to the emotion of what was going on. Because we were being a little more forward about, 'Okay, this is about a gay relationship.' Or 'This is a metaphor for alcoholism that's pretty bald.' We go there because that's the stuff of life and that's really what the show's about most of the time." |
Then again, Ms. Noxon is the person many viewers credit - or blame - for the content and tone of the sixth season. Could we then say that the heavier emphasis on issues was her doing, and not Joss's? Not according to what she told the New York Times:
| "People ... blame me for the darkness of last season's shows, and those story lines were created by Joss a year earlier. This show is a slow-turning ship. But suddenly, I'm the Queen of Darkness on the Net!" |
The assertion that Joss was responsible for the storylines of the sixth season is reinforced by a recent post from Steven DeKnight at the Bronze Beta. In the midst of a long-overdue apology for his offensive and hurtful performance at The Succubus Club last May, he said this about the decision to kill Tara:
| "I still support Joss' decision to do what he did in order to tell the story he wanted to. If I had my way, would Tara have died? Of course not. It was a beautiful relationship and I was sorry to see it end in such a violent, tragic manner. But the Jossverse is built on a bedrock of pain and suffering, and this is how it played out." |
Just as an aside, I should also note that this is the first time I've seen anyone from Mutant Enemy stray from the official party line on the subject of Tara's death. All summer long, we were told that "the needs of the story" required Tara to die. They've claimed that there was no other way to tell the story they wanted to tell. But here not only does Mr. DeKnight say that another way existed, he also claims that he would have chosen a different option. In other words, Tara's death didn't serve the story nearly as much as it served the story-teller - Joss Whedon.
Pointing the finger
As you've been reading all these quotes we've been looking at, you may have noticed a trend. David Greenberg accuses the viewers of homophobia because they didn't understand what was being done with Tara's character. David Fury gets into trouble because the viewers who read his Q&A didn't understand the context of his jokes about rape. Marti Noxon is upset because the viewers didn't understand that Joss was in charge of the storylines in season six, and not her.
Spotted it yet?
It's as if the folks at Mutant Enemy, with the surprising but welcome exception of Steven DeKnight, have collectively decided to play "blame the viewer." If they and/or their shows are in trouble, it must be because they're misunderstood.
And where does this attitude come from? Look at the top of the Mutant Enemy totem pole, and you'll find the answer. For example, let's see what Joss Whedon told Wanda about the reaction to Tara's death:
| "What was surprising was that there was a lot of hate toward us. It was an episode that was so clearly about male violence and male dominance, and suddenly I'm a gay basher. It's one thing when you piss off the people you want wiped off the planet. It's different when it's people you care about--your audience. But it's especially frustrating when they treat you in the same knee-jerk manner." |
Or more recently, look at what he told TV Guide when asked about an upcoming international academic conference on the subject of Buffy:
| "I'm psyched because [last] season is the bastard child that everyone's mean to. We had a purpose. And for people to take it seriously and not just to say, 'That season was depressing and the villains were nerds,' makes me feel good." |
When the person at the top has decided that the last season's problems were the result of viewers being "mean" and not taking the show seriously, it's not too great a stretch to imagine the subordinates following suit. But while all this viewer-blaming might relieve the bruising of a few egos, does it really do any good for the show?
The cold, hard numbers
One member of the Mutant Enemy staff I haven't mentioned yet is Jane Espenson. She was at the Bronze Beta along with Drew Greenberg, gleefully cheering him on as he told the viewers how homophobic they were. When her turn came to accuse the audience of not understanding something, she chose the subject of ratings. Here's what she said:
| "I'm sitting 0 feet from where Buffy is written. We are under the impression that our ratings are just fine! We are a show that attracts advertisers in search of a very specific demo -- not just age but lifestyle, income level, etc. These advertisers seem very happy." |
Apparently, wherever Ms. Espenson is sitting doesn't give her much access to the media. If I quoted every article that's been written lately about the poor ratings of Mutant Enemy shows, I could probably double the length of this essay. I'll spare you all that extra reading, though, and offer just a few samples:
| "On UPN, Buffy began its seventh season to just under 5 million viewers, far less than last season's premiere which drew about 7.6 million." |
| -- New York Post, September 27 2002 |
| "Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Sarah Michelle Gellar's witty, demon-bashing odyssey has sprung a ratings leak at the start of its seventh season. Rival WB's fresher Gilmore Girls is easily winning the time period." |
| -- Detroit Free Press, October 8 2002 |
| "Two weeks into the new TV season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer network UPN's getting hammered in the ratings, meaning it will be forced to give away free commercial time to satisfy its advertisers, media buyers said. "With its ratings down 30% in its key demographic of 18 to 34 year olds, Viacom-owned UPN 'is hurting the most' of all the six broadcast networks, said Michael Drexler, chief executive of media buying firm Optimedia International. "Among the downers: returning programs Buffy and Star Trek: Enterprise, as well as newcomer Haunted. "'Their target audience is getting clobbered,' Drexler said." |
| -- New York Daily News, October 9 2002 |
Perhaps this last article explains why Ms. Espenson thinks the advertisers are happy. I know I'd be happy if my business was getting commercial airtime for free.
Nor is Buffy the only Mutant Enemy series having ratings trouble. Firefly is having even more problems:
| This Friday Fox series was eagerly anticipated, as it came from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. More mystifying and unintentionally comic than cosmic, it has turned into a sci-fi dud. It ranks in the Nielsen 90s and, worse, often trails the show that follows it, John Doe, by a couple million viewers. That means Fox viewers are skipping the 8 p. m. hour and then watching at 9 p.m. -- the biggest vote of no confidence there is." |
| -- San Francisco Chronicle, October 14 2002 |
Mutant Enemy might be able to spin the poor ratings for a bunch of viewers who "don't understand," but network executives won't be fooled when they have plenty of cold, hard numbers sitting in front of them. The new season is less than a month old, but Firefly is already on almost everyone's list of shows about to be cancelled, and Buffy is starting to feel the heat from unhappy members of the UPN brass. Only Angel seems fairly secure - for the moment. If Joss decides to take Angel on a journey to the dark side like he did with Buffy last season, he'll start to lose a large portion of the viewers who tune in for its lead-in show, the shamelessly goofy but still successful Charmed. If that happens, it won't take long for Angel to get into trouble as well.
I've already seen posts online from people trying to make sense of the ratings mess. The most common excuses I've seen being made attempt to place blame on the networks. Firefly's troubles are because FOX rejected the original pilot, or because they didn't promote the show well enough. Likewise, Buffy's troubles are the result of UPN not giving the show the same kind of promotional kick they gave it last year.
This kind of scapegoating provides a great deal of fodder for post-cancellation bitterness parties, but it doesn't do much else. It certainly doesn't win over the hearts and minds of the network executives in whose hands the fates of these shows rest. Besides, at least in the case of Buffy it's not even true. UPN tried to turn the season premiere night into a promotional event, having James Marsters "host" the evening and throwing in a special performance by the Goo Goo Dolls. None of the other networks went to such lengths that night, and yet all of them scored better ratings than Buffy - so is UPN really to blame?
In television, the most powerful influence on viewer size is word of mouth. Word of mouth, and not promos by the WB, was what made Buffy a success to begin with. People watched the show and liked it, and they told other people to watch and those other people liked it. And while UPN did do a large media blitz at the beginning of last season, that was largely to tell viewers where they could find the show on the dial. Remember what the billboards looked like? A pair of eyes with the words "Buffy lives... on UPN." The pitch assumed that you already knew who Buffy was and why there was a question of whether or not she was alive. You had to have heard about the show from somewhere else in order to understand what the billboard meant.
The problem both Buffy and Firefly have had is that the word of mouth on them so far has been mostly bad. Firefly started with bad buzz because the original pilot was rejected and there were several critics saying the original pilot deserved to be rejected. For a little while after the series premiered, there was some word of mouth along the lines of "it wasn't so bad," but that's not a very compelling argument. Now I think the show has simply dropped off most people's radar.
Look at Buffy and you'll see similar trouble. The buzz from the sixth season has been almost universally bad. The musical happened almost a year ago now, and there's really been nothing more to say that's good. Spike getting a soul? The fans can't even agree on whether that's a good thing, so how can new viewers connect to it? Dark Magic Willow? That lasted all of three episodes, two of which were shown on the same night - hardly enough to get people talking. This season being "back to the beginning?" That lasted exactly one episode, and then it was back to sixth season business as usual. The recent website gimmick for the Cassie character from the episode "Help?" Cassie was a one-shot character - if you didn't see "Help," you have no idea who she even is.
What's the answer? What will it take to generate better word of mouth and prompt people to say good things about Buffy again? I can tell you one thing that won't work, and that's complaint after complaint from the people at Mutant Enemy about how misunderstood they are. When you call people homophobes, or tell them they're being mean, or that they don't understand you, or you make fun of them, those people aren't likely to go out among their friends and sing your praises. Just the opposite, in fact.
In my past essays, I've tried to promote what I called "a better way of doing business," a method of running a TV show in which the people who watch the show are seen as being in a relationship with the people who make the show. Another way of phrasing that is to say that it's a method where the people making the show have a sense of humility instead of overbearing pride. It's pride that makes producers think they know how to give their viewers "what they need." It's pride that makes writers lash out at viewers who dare to criticize them. And it's overbearing pride that will eventually alienate the audience and send them looking for something else to watch.
Practicing humility means listening to what the viewers tell you instead of explaining to them why they're wrong. It means being sensitive to their true wants and needs instead of assuming they need what you think they do. And practicing humility means admitting when you made a mistake and apologizing for it. You'll notice that Steven DeKnight is the only person from Mutant Enemy I've spoken highly of in this essay, and that's after I spent the previous four essays criticizing him. What made the difference? He apologized. He admitted he'd done something wrong. He practiced humility.
It's not too late for Mutant Enemy - but the ticking of the clock is getting progressively louder. Gimmicks, quirky promotions and name-calling aren't going to put the viewers back in front of their televisions. I must admit, though, that at this late hour a good dose of humility might not be enough, either - but it certainly has a better chance.
Robert A. Black is learning a few things about humility himself, as he continues to seek publishers for the books he's written over the past year.
Comments, anyone?
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"A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly" - Thomas Merton
at: 10/21/02 10:58:02 am
). After that it should be ready to go.
