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BTVS Movie Makers -- neaux, 09:03:40 07/16/03 Wed

Hey folks, been a while since I posted a topic so be kind!

Well I find this interesting that every 2 months or so, MARC BLUCAS, aka Riley Finn has a hollywood movie coming out.

His next movie is I Capture the Castle and looks somewhat interesting.

Why is it He is banging out all these movies?
Of course he's been off the show since season 5. And going movie bound has obviously worked for him.

Well since BTVS is over (sob!) Which other BTVS actor will continue to get steady work.. as much so as Marc Blucas?
[> Re: BTVS Movie Makers -- Darby, 09:24:33 07/16/03 Wed

Does anyone know the timing enough to answer this question -

Marc Blucas was part of a Scooby-Doo send-up in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Could Kevin Smith have known the extra layers - not only the Scooby-Buffy connection, but also with SMG in Scooby-Doo the movie - at the time he made J&SB? And (ignore this last part if you wish, it's idle, distasteful speculation) is there some sort of feud going on here?

But here's another question - if Anthony Stewart Head returns to Hollywood, could he do okay in parts that Sean Connery has gotten too old for?
[> [> Re: BTVS Movie Makers -- Vegeta, 10:50:52 07/16/03 Wed

Anthony Stewart Head doing Connery-esque roles would be great. But, he seems quite attached to the UK television at the moment. But I'll cross my fingers and hope.
On the J&SB subject I did find it suprising that there were two BtVS alumni's in the film. However, I don't think it was purposeful that MB appeared in the SD sendoff, but then again Kevin Smith is the type of person to intentionaly put a scene in his films just to piss off/get back at someone. Was he possibly slotted to direct Scobby Doo at some point?
[> [> ASH movies? I'm there. -- neaux, 10:55:08 07/16/03 Wed

Whether ASH takes on Sean Connery roles or not, if he made feature films.. I would so be there.

I think any smart director would hire ASH. Hell, arent the "Potter" movies entirely British cast? It would be freakin'great to see him in a HP movie.
[> [> [> ASH as Remus Lupin . . . -- HonorH, 12:21:25 07/16/03 Wed

Oh, all my naughtiest fangirl dreams come true!
[> [> [> [> I'd heard... -- ponygirl, 12:58:15 07/16/03 Wed

That JM read for the part of Lucius Malfoy. Which would have been cool, except when I picture him in the long flowing wig they had on Lucius. Probably not a good look for him.

Ah Remus... sigh.
[> [> Re: BTVS Movie Makers -- Cheryl, 11:08:29 07/16/03 Wed

Marc Blucas was part of a Scooby-Doo send-up in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Could Kevin Smith have known the extra layers - not only the Scooby-Buffy connection, but also with SMG in Scooby-Doo the movie - at the time he made J&SB? And (ignore this last part if you wish, it's idle, distasteful speculation) is there some sort of feud going on here?

I've wondered for some time now what kind of connection a lot of the BtVS actors have with other showbiz types (i.e., agents, producers, etc.) because:

1) Blucas and Danny Strong were both in Pleasantville, which starred Reese Witherspoon of Cruel Intentions with SMG.

2) Eliza Dushku was also in the Jay and Silent Bob movie (although not in any scene with MB).

3) MB and Freddie Prinze Jr both play Scooby Doo Fred and they were both in Summer Catch.

4) Seth Green and AH have worked together previously.

5) Amber Benson, Eliza Dushku, and Lindsey Crouse were in a movie together.

As for I Capture the Castle - I've been dying to see that one since I first heard about it, and it's not even coming to Phoenix! At least not for awhile.

I also find it interesting that MB is not only getting lots of movies, but movies with some decent stars (Mel Gibson, Gwyennth Paltrow, Dennis Quaid, Edie Falco, to name a few). Now I love MB - I'd take B/R over B/A or B/S any day - and see him in everything he does (even including Summer Catch - ugh), but for someone who started out as a professional basketball player, he's sure come a long way.

As for the question of what other Buffy actors have movies coming up, isn't James Marsters supposed to start shooting a movie in September with Derek Jacobi?
[> [> [> Yes, indeed. -- HonorH, 12:24:14 07/16/03 Wed

Don't know much about it, but yes, James Marsters is set to play the Derek Jacobi character's lover. I believe Sean Bean is in the project, too.

Sean Bean--yummy!
[> [> Yes -- Sara, hearing 'Bond, James Bond' in her head, 12:02:33 07/16/03 Wed

What a great idea, sweetie, you should be a casting director! He's got the ability to put a real edge on, and he can also be totally charming and suave. That would be cool! (Going back to work now, really!)
New post about the JW S6 misogyny thread -- curious, 16:08:52 07/16/03 Wed

Since the posts on that thread are getting more and more confusing - it has been suggested that a new thread be started - with a new focus. I am hoping Diana and others will add their posts here.

(my connection seems really slow so I am having trouble with the page loading and finding all the disconnected posts I have been respoding to.)

Did JW actually say Spike was a misogynist? I don't think so. I think he was saying something else and we might be debating the wrong issues.

This is the quote that has caused so much debate:

And, her getting into a genuinely unhealthy relationship with Spike that was all about dominance, control, and deep misogyny. How lost did we get? Well, our villain turned out to be Willow."

I'll cut and paste some of my other posts here. Just wanted to start a new thread.
[> But DID Joss say Spike was a misogynist? -- curious, 16:18:37 07/16/03 Wed

That is what Joss is saying.

I'm not sure he did.The tiny little quote that has everyone so hot and bothered says:

And, her getting into a genuinely unhealthy relationship with Spike that was all about dominance, control, and deep misogyny. How lost did we get? Well, our villain turned out to be Willow.

It looks to me like he was saying that B/S was an exploration of an unhealthy relationship that contained elements of dominance, control and misogyny - on both sides. That Buffy's self hate was also a form of misogyny. And there really isn't enough to the quote to know exactly what he meant.

The quotes about S7 B/S as "romantic" and "beautiful" also change the interpretation of the first quote.
[> [> Agree... -- Q, 16:28:57 07/16/03 Wed

>>>It looks to me like he was saying that B/S was an exploration of an unhealthy relationship that contained elements of dominance, control and misogyny - on both sides. That Buffy's self hate was also a form of misogyny.<<<

Oh, I agree with this. As much as I think that Spike and Warren represented different types of misogynists, I think Buffy represented another abuse of male power. I think this was a comment on domestic abuse. Though both partners can be abused, the percentage is so overwhelmingly in favor of male abusing female that this becomes a womens issue. Even though Buffy is LITERALLY female-- in this situation I find her to be SYMBOLICALLY male (she is the stronger of the two). In domestic violence situations, husbands will typically use the other partner for sexual gratification, and will typically beat the hell out of the other partner... EXACTLY what Buffy was doing to Spike all season long.

Yes, I believe they were BOTH guilty of these things-- which makes it DOUBLE as hard to accept a Buffy/Spike pairing-- or at least the sheer numbers calling for it at that point in the series.
[> [> [> Well.... -- curious, 16:38:27 07/16/03 Wed

I'm glad don't see Spike as merely a misogynist but as a former counselor of Battered Women - I disagree about B/S as a case of DV. I'll paste my post from my archived response on another thread.

Here's the archived post:

I can only respond to this thread from personal experience. I have been thinking about why this "AR" scene didn't bother me as much as it did other people. And I think that one reason is the I have seen much worse situations in real life - but as a health care worker and counselor - not for myself and not with someone very close to me. In the ER and in the Battered Women's shelter, I had to maintain a certain emotional detachment in order to do my job - But I have never been a victim of DV or rape or sexual assault so - I looked at the scene fairly clinically and could appreciate the acting and emotionality without getting as upset.

I'm just not sure about whether or not ME was brave or stupid/naive to try to do this "AR" after exploring an S&M relationship where we switched between Spike's and Buffy's POV. We could go around and around about what they could or should have done differently - but the fact of the matter is they did the bathroom scene and we have to deal with the aftermath of that. I love the character of Spike and appreciated the intricate relationship portrayed but I also thought something dramatic like the "AR" was somewhat inevitable. I'm not sure what they were going for. I'm not convinced that it was "necessary" to the storytelling but I'm also not convinced an attempted siring would have been better. I do think they took an artistic chance by making the scene to stark and realistic rather than mythical/metaphorical. (The cut to commercial in the middle was TACKY though. It isn't any better on the DVD.)

The other reason I could see this scene as Spike going too far in trying to get Buffy to love him without any intent to harm her initially (I'm trying to short hand this. I realize more than that was going on) - was BUFFY's reaction - her state of mind. She didn't act like the victims of sexual violence I have worked with. She took Dawn to Spike's crypt for protection almost immediately after the incident in the bathroom. (which also causes me to ask - Don't these people have any other friends or acquaintances??? What about Janice's mother? What about that lady from L.A. Law at Social Services??? but I digress.) It can and has been argued that Buffy used poor judgment here - and I agree - but it also shows that she was less upset by the bathroom scene than many in the audience were. ME didn't have to show Buffy taking Dawn to Spike's crypt or show her looking sad when she found out Spike had left town. I'm not sure I want to expand on this point - except to say that this made sort of a "victim impact statement" to me. i.e. Buffy didn't feel victimized so I didn't hate Spike after the bathroom scene. (not sure I'm expressing myself well here.) I also felt Buffy was the stronger party and was never really in danger of being assaulted. If you think about it - the "AR" did two positive things - it definitively ended B/S and caused Spike to seek out his soul. Maybe that is what ME was going for??

And just a shortish note about Domestic Violence/Abuse (DV for short). I have seen some people call Buffy's treatment of Spike DV or more frequently Spike's treatment of Buffy =DV. IMO, this was not DV - it was a consensual, mutually abusive, unhealthy relationship - even though there may have been some mutual feelings in there somewhere. DV in real life is a lot different. There is an serious imbalance of power - even though love and caring might be muddying the waters on both sides. One of the partners - most often (but not always) the woman in a heterosexual relationship has a lot less power than the other partner and is psychologically and sometimes (but not always) physically abused. (DV can also involve child abuse, elder abuse, homosexual relationships, etc.) The thing that gets tricky is that sometimes physical abuse is easier to deal with than the day to day fear that something might happen. Waiting for the "other shoe to drop" is often described as harder to deal with than the actual violence. When blatant physical abuse happens, there is a possibility of getting attention and/or sympathy - from medical personnel, from social services, etc. Psychological, financial, etc. abuse is much harder to define. The abused partner feels worthless and embarrassed and can't "escape" and is usally very isolated. It doesn't help when well meaning people say - "Just get out." There is a lot of "blaming the victim" so the victim either blames him/herself and/or hides the abuse. This is especially true of male victims - so those victims may be under-reported. Medical personnel and police are finally getting training about how to identify DV in emergency and medical settings. Back in the old days, the cops would take the injured party to the ER to get patched up and bring her (usually her) back home and advise her not to rile up the abuser again - especially when he's drunk. (sorry if I got pedantic and OT here.)

Anyway - B/S doesn't fit the pattern of DV. Very different dynamic.
[> [> [> [> Re: Well.... -- RJA, 17:12:38 07/16/03 Wed

Completely agree with this post. From my knowledge of domestic violence, B/S doesnt replicate the typical experience of such victims, and if it was meant to it raises points I'm more than a little uncomfotable with regarfding their relationship. Mutually abusive works best as far as i can tell.

Although the thing about Dawn going to stay with Spike is that she asked to stay with him. He was her first port of call in her mind. So while this is most likely just a storytelling device to let the characters know Spike has gone, it also shows Buffy's feelings, as well as Dawn's basic instinct.
[> [> [> Re: Agree... -- curious, 16:53:33 07/16/03 Wed

Yes, I believe they were BOTH guilty of these things-- which makes it DOUBLE as hard to accept a Buffy/Spike pairing-- or at least the sheer numbers calling for it at that point in the series.

I agree with this. But I think that ME did this to themselves. They switched between Buffy's and Spike's POV and didn't make it clear to the audience. They made Spike the sympathetic underdog and then said "But you were supposed to see he was eeevil." Pretty confusing.

I thought B/S was an interesting, messy relationship - up to a certain point. I thought Buffy might have cared about Spike more than she admitted to herself. I think they were abusing each other - that neither was the "good guy" or the "bad guy". It was an unhealthy relationship but that was more obvious in retrospect after it was over - like a lot of unhealthy relationships.

In the S6 DVD commentary - Joss says Buffy wanted to be loved and touched but she also wanted to be punished - and used Spike to punish herself. That's a lot for and audience to understand. I think they went so far in trying to be ambiguous that they ended up polarizing the audience.

Some thought Buffy was the clear abuser and some thought Spike was the clear abuser. ME was trying to make another statement. I'm just not sure what that was. ;-)
[> [> [> [> Okay...reposting a somewhat controversial post -- s'kat, 21:34:12 07/16/03 Wed

Some thought Buffy was the clear abuser and some thought Spike was the clear abuser. ME was trying to make another statement. I'm just not sure what that was. ;-)

The more I think about it, more convinced I am that ECH is right on this one - that ME was attempting something very ambitious and ground-breaking for tv, and almost impossible for most viewers to wrap their minds/emotions around.

Here's a revision of a post that I made to the misogyny thread in response to Valheru's post on the topic. Upon re-reading it, I think it may inadvertently push some peoples buttons, hoping it won't. This is such a volatile topic.

"I can understand why some watching the AR scene feel the need to see Spike's act as being the result of hatred, it is far harder to deal with the possibility that it can be motivated by other emotions - b/c that would be akin to admitting you yourself could find yourself doing something like that and/or could be the victim of it, or maybe were and that, understandably is not something any of us want to deal with. To be honest the scene would have been easier for me to handle if it was more black and white, an evil monster, Buffy stakes. But it wasn't. And that is the reason we're still debating it over a year later, no matter what thread we're in at the moment. It is also the reason that I think the actor, James Marsters came very very close to having a nervous breakdown and leaving the show over acting it (as he implies in some interviews, stating CrazySpike in S7 was a bit too close to what he himself was going through for comfort, the reason he threw method acting out the window)...b/c he himself had troubles understanding what was going on in that scene. It hit a little too close to home. The Angel/Angelus story line in S2 was sooo much easier for us to deal with emotionally, b/c Angelus was so far removed from us emotionally, we had that nice layer of metaphor in between. Spike and Buffy's actions in S6 were not removed from us, there was no nice layer of metaphor and if we weren't careful we could see twisted versions of ourselves in their characters. But to put lables such as misogyny on it, I think is trivalizing it or may even be a means of stating that oh, I'm a guy and I'm clearly not a misogynist so no fear of me going there (I'm not implying that anyone on this board is thinking or saying that - just speaking generally - I have no clue what gender most posters are or their experience) or I'm a woman and oh my boyfriend isn't a misogynist so no fear of that and since I'm a woman? No fear of me ever doing it either. What the AR scene suggests in its murkiness is when you get involved in a S&M type of relationship - then the possibility of sexual assualt and/or rape always exists. When the two parties are playing domination games with each other, mixed signals can always happen. No matter how much you trust one another. And that I think is far more frightening to some of us than the idea that Spike hated women/hated Buffy and tried to rape her. Because the misogyny view - let's Buffy off the hook and us through her. "It's all Spike's fault...I feel better now. Stake him. Torture him. I don't have to think about it any further." etc.

The counter to that is equally true by the way - the posters who couldn't deal with the concept of Spike attacking Buffy in that way - make it all Buffy's fault, and that view in some ways scares me even more than the other one does. And is why I had problems with ME doing the scene. I honestly don't care if people blame Spike for it, but implication that Buffy was to blame - sends a message, I don't even want to contemplate. It wasn't Buffy's fault. It's not that simple. She had no way of predicting it would go that far. Did her actions propell it there? Maybe. But that does not make it her fault. (Again not saying anyone on this board is suggesting this, just speaking generally). So validating Spike's actions - is another way of letting ourselves off the proverbial hook. "Buffy drove him to it. It's all her fault. Torture her. The bitch. She should have kicked him off sooner. Spike would never do that." etc.

I honestly think the scene the way it's written doesn't give us that easy an escape route. There's no way out. No pat explanation. No safe answer. At least with Angelus, HyenaXander, Faith, Warren and Caleb we have one. And ECH may have come closest to seeing what happened due to the fact that his own experience oddly parallels it as well as the writer's whose experience the whole B/S relationship was based on. I honestly believe that if you've never been in this type of relationship or situation it is nearly impossible to completely wrap your emotions or brain around it without losing it a bit or wanting to come up with some nice answer to explain it away. And I think from Whedon's quote - that may have been Whedon and Company's intention - not to give us an easy way out because in real life things tend to be ambiguous and not so easy to explain away.

I think that's what Whedon was going for. The murkiness.
He wanted to shove us head-first into the moral ambiguity of abusive relationships which can't be neatly solved with a stake to the heart. It's a tough thing for a young audience to deal with. I know I didn't have a handle on moral ambiguity until I was at least 28 and I still struggle with it today. How do you handle watching your heros do horrible confusing things? How do handle someone you love and trust hurting you? It's in a way much much easier when it's a stranger or someone you hate - I suspect Buffy had an easier time dealing with Warren shooting her, than Spike attempting to rape her or Angelus trying to kill her. But at least with Angelus, she had that layer of metaphor in between. Although I think she'd tell you now there really wasn't any. With Spike - we get the Buffy/Angelus story through adult eyes, the metaphors ripped away. I think - that's why some fans can forgive Angel anything and Spike nothing or hold Spike to a harsher standard. I think it's also why some fans insist on dismissing Spike as just another misogynst, even though the notion seems incredibly contradictory to others. Because to see him in any other light...may be shining a light on their own inner selves, just as shining a light too brightly on Xander - makes some people uncomfortable. And that I think was what ME was attempting to do - shine that light.

Not sure that makes sense.

Just my humble view. YMMV.

I realize the above is somewhat controversal and I hesistated to repost it, liking the fact it was safely hidden below. So if you hate? Don't rip me to shreds for it. ;-)

sk
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Okay...reposting a somewhat controversial post -- heywhynot, 11:24:27 07/17/03 Thu

I do agree that it was an adult relationship that JW & company were exploring with B/S. Sexually it was very adult though emotionally it was very immature. It was about dominance games, it was about shying away from the pain of life, it was about pleasure/passion, lust. It was not Buffy and Angel. They loved one another and then sex happened and changed everything. B/S wasn't about love to start it was about sex. Dealing with the consequences Buffy and Spike came to love & trust one another as seen in season 7. Season 6 though Buffy and Spike are using one another, giving into lust. Playing games that neither one of them is mature enough to handle but it is that immaturity that causes them to get into that relationship in the first place. It was complicated, it wasn't easy for me to watch throughout the whole season. They were willingly playing in grey area without caring really about the consequences. Spike though without a soul went too far, he couldn't tell when to stop. Buffy though knew he was soulless and in that universe without the ability to know where the limits would be. It is what drew her into the relationship but it is also why she finally ends it in AR. It is interesting that through sex with Buffy Angel lost his soul and by having sexual relations with Buffy, Spike is sent on a course that leads him to have a soul.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Interesting post. Agree with this. -- s'kat, 11:52:20 07/17/03 Thu

[> [> [> [> [> You knew I'd have something to say about this one....;) -- Rufus, 04:47:27 07/22/03 Tue

How do you handle watching your heros do horrible confusing things?

I think that for some people that heroes specifically female heroes are expected to do the right thing every time. In reality it's impossible for anyone to live up to that standard...that is why mythical heroes tend to be what we feel most comfortable. The idea that Buffy could have aggressive sexual feelings and anger that she worked out in a very physical way with Spike was enough for some people to throw the Buffy out with the bath water. I think it's easier to be a villian...in the transition from evil to good we already understand that the party involved has done some things that are evil, bad...but when our hero does something that deviates from a heroic norm it's harder to take. I think M. Night Shyamalan was onto something when he spoke about loss causing a paradigm shift. Season six for Buffy was about the loss of the perfect afterlife....she decended into a dark place because she somehow thought she was being punnished...her ascent to light came when she had her epiphany about life being more than suffering and loss.

From......

Auteur, heal thy audience by Carrie Rickey INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC

"I focus on loss because when you lose someone, the paradigm shifts," Shyamalan reflects. "Then the story becomes about moving from darkness to epiphany."
The marketer in him knows that audiences respond to the journey from dark to light more intensely than they do the return trip. But the shaman in Shyamalan also believes that the passage into illumination is more healing.

I loved season six because I knew that not only villains travel in dark places, that even a hero can become lost. The journey back to the hero we loved in Buffy was painful but I think can be seen as a metaphor for the journey many of us go through when we go from insecurity to the maturity that comes from the process of growing up.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Okay...reposting a somewhat controversial post -- auroramama, 19:34:58 07/18/03 Fri

Thanks for reposting -- otherwise I would have missed it. (I can't afford to read ATPo at work; it's just too distracting for too long.) Well written, well reasoned, and willing to get messy in order to describe a complicated, messy concept: I like it. Doesn't hurt that I agree, of course.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Thanks! -- s'kat, 21:03:27 07/18/03 Fri

[> [> Re: Connection of the soul to Misogyny -- sdev, 22:24:01 07/16/03 Wed

I guess this is arguing backwards but what is the connection of the soul to curing misogyny? I don't see it. Was Spike in Season 7 no longer a misogynist beacause he had acquired a soul, or was he still a misogynist just no longer acting on it?

Does not make sense to me.
[> [> Re: But DID Joss say Spike was a misogynist? -- Ace_of_Sevens, 22:43:48 07/16/03 Wed

On the commentary to The Initiative, Doug Petrie talks about Spike being angry at all women after Drusilla dumped him.
[> [> [> Even if he was after Dru dumped him (and I'm not saying he was at all) -- Deb, 00:15:40 07/17/03 Thu

"The Gift" took care of that problem. He became all chivalrous and had dreams of saving Buffy every night. And he took care of Dawn, and almost died again for worry about her safety. Now he did kinka, (oops, Freudian slip!) yell at her when she was complaing about him being the babysitter and he did force her to play cards, eat her vegetables, be in at a decent hour, and probably brush and floss her teeth and use teeth whitner strips together to get ride of the yellow tar stains. And they shared their bereavement over the loss of Buffy while the others were out giving Willow a taste of the wild side of magic. And when Buffy came back, the real Buffy, he wanted to clean her wounds and tried to show empathy for Buffy having to claw her way out of the grave. I can just feel the hate. And he kept her secret: That she thought she had been in He-Heaven.

And when she wants to throw away her life, because she believed she had killed April, though it be morally ambiguous, he let Buffy beat the unliving crap out of him hoping she would come to her senses. He really, really hated Buffy.

God. It is quite clear to me, that, yes indeed, this not man not vampire hates women, and that is the real reason he did those disgusting things to Buffy when she came over for a booty call -- that's why he stopped her from falling to the will of Sweet and blazing away on the dance floor. He wanted her to live, the scummy she-hater. But he wanted her to live FOR HIM. Selfish, manipulative creep.....gag, gag, gag.........spit.....ewwwww!
[> [> [> [> Tone -- Sophist, 09:33:26 07/17/03 Thu

The sarcasm in your post makes it sound like you're attacking Ace personally. I don't think you are, because s/he was merely quoting an earlier comment by Petrie. You might want to clarify that.
[> [> [> [> [> No. That was not my intention. I apologize -- DEb, 20:39:40 07/17/03 Thu

Thank you for telling me. Guess I'm just not ready to play well yet.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Don't beat yourself up over it. -- Sophist, 21:18:49 07/17/03 Thu

We all do similar things -- it sounds ok in our heads because we know what we mean. It just comes out different on paper. Ace is new here and I just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding.
[> [> [> [> Re: Even if he was after Dru dumped him (and I'm not saying he was at all) -- Malandanza, 08:25:31 07/18/03 Fri

I think you're being a little too hard on poor William, who, after all, was a good man in life (unlike that drunken lout, Liam), devoted to his mother, cherishing his unrequited love. We all know Darla's quote on vampire -- "what we once were informs all that we become" -- so William who was devoted to women in life became Spike who carried that same devotion into his unlife. Sure, sometimes a devotion in life becomes twisted into something evil when a person is vamped, but not always. The examples are too numerous to be worth mentioning.

Probably the most damaging claim in the misogyny debate has been that Spike, like Caleb, got a sexual thrill from killing young women. Clearly, though, when you consider Spike's personality, these kills were not in the least misogynistic. Had the Slayers been boys, and the show been Xander, the Vampire Slayer the scenes would have played out exactly the same way. In Fool For Love it is not at all difficult to picture Spike standing over the body of the fallen boy slayer, hands covered in blood, offering Dru a taste of the aphrodisiac. We can easily envision an alternate ending of FFL where Spike works himself up into a state of sexual excitement just by thinking of the boys he's killed, leans over to grope Xander, but is ruthlessly rejected by the homophobic Xander, who accuses Spike of "getting off" on the kills (hypocritically) then declares that Spike is "beneath him" and treats him like a male whore, tossing the cash on the ground after he's gotten what he came for, leaving Spike to scrabble after it while Xander prances sanctimoniously away. You see, it was never about killing women -- it was just about killing. It may seem that Spike sought out women exclusively, but that's only because Slayers are exclusively women. He's actually an equal opportunity killer -- no misogyny there at all.

And anyway, Spike was really doing the slayers a favor when he killed them. These poor, young women had had their lives stolen by the patriarchal and deeply misogynistic WC, turned into weapons in the hands of a few old men, who used them ruthlessly. Their only escape was death, something they yearned for, the Death Wish. We saw in Buffy's case that the only time she was happy was when she was dead, she could finally rest. It was murder so much as assisted suicide. They wanted it. He was freeing young women from slavery to the patriarchy one death at a time. Spike is and always has been totally devoted to women. He gives them what they want, even if what they want is an untimely and gruesome death. This isn't misogyny! It's the opposite of misogyny! He killed them because he loved them.

Some people cast aspersions on Spike's characters for his Season Five escapades with Harmony, the Buffy Bot, and the Dru and Buffy chaining. Let me address these issues:

At first, Harmony may seem to be a contradiction of Spike's Courtly Lover personality, but think about what kind of woman Harmony was -- shallow, interested only in sex, looking for a bad-boy boyfriend she could brag about to her friends. Spike became exactly the sort of man she was looking for, the kind of man she wanted -- he did it for her, so it's really just an extension of the Courtly Lover. Even when he staked her, it was not because she was talking too much, it was a tough love lesson in where this sort of unfulfilling relationship ultimately leads. And look at the result -- Harmony went out and collected self help books. For the first time, she was interested in becoming empowered - Spike's tough love approach worked.

Next, the so called "sexbot". There are some prudes on the board who find Spike having sex with simulacrum Buffy (dressed up in clothes pilfered from Buffy's own closet) disturbing and wrong, and unjustly compare April and Warren to Spike and Buffy v2.0. April was a misogynybot -- a sentient creature built so Warren would have a woman to order around and demean. The Buffybot was a non-sentient relationshipbot, one that showed how deeply Spike cares for Buffy. Sure, Xander accused Spike of taking advantage of Buffy in her time of grief when he saw Spike and v2.0 romping in the graveyard, but Xander's didn't realize v2.0 was a robot -- an inanimate object devoid of any real feelings. Xander's not the sharpest nail in the coffin.

Next we come to Crush where Spike chains up his past and future Ladyloves and threatens each with death. Some people would say this scene shows that Spike's relationship with Dru was never as passionate or romantic as it's been portrayed, as Spike would never have tried to kill his old flame, but they forget a few things: first, this sort of behavior is what Dru likes, so Spike is catering to her whims; next, the scene ought to be interpreted symbolically rather than literally (which I'll get to in a minute), and, finally, this would never have happened if Buffy hadn't been so uptight and prejudiced -- if she had admitted how hot she thinks Spike is and how much she wants him (it's really her fault, like most things). Looking back the Spike and Dru relationship, with the advantage of having seen Season Seven, it is clear that Dru represented Spike's ailing and infirm mother. Spike cares for her with all the devotion of a son, he loves her, but as a mother rather than a lover (and it isn't even clear that Spike and Dru ever had sex). But in Crush, Dru is the mother who stands in Spike's way of leaving the house and becoming a man. Spike has to cut the umbilical cord and make his own way, find a woman worthy of him, and start his own family. He cannot be tied to his mother forever. The threatened staking was Spike's way of proving he was an adult, ready for adult relationships after his extended period of enforced adolescence at his mother's side. And it's just like Buffy to see this grand, romantic gesture as something base an impure.

You've covered many of the complaints about Season Six already, so I'll just mention a few that you left by the wayside (no doubt because of their trivial nature).

First, Spike attempting to separate Buffy from her friends. Have we forgotten that these "friends" are the ones responsible for her pain? Not just in dragging her out of heaven, but in dragging her out twice (thanks to Willow in TR). Spike knows, better than anyone, what slayers go through. Resurrection is the worst thing they could have done to Buffy. He isn't separating her from a support group, but rather a group of prejudiced, self-involved children playing at being friends. The best thing that could have happened to her would have been to be bereft of these psychic parasites, and Spike knows it.

The demon eggs were an attempt by Spike to get money for Buffy -- he was nobly willing to flirt with darkness to save her from a job she found demeaning (she's such an elitist). And his reward? A blown-up crypt when Mr. & Mrs. Misogyny roll into town, full of jingoism and army steroids. A lesser man might have blamed Buffy for the havoc, since he did it for her, or might have found fault with his girlfriend for hopping out of his bed to flirt with her ex, but not Spike -- he loves women so much he sees past even their most serious faults.

Next, the so-called "Attempted Rape". I know some posters have claimed that "all vampires rape", but this absolute statement is hardly supported. We have seen suggestions that Angelus raped, but that's it -- of all the vampires on the show. Anyway, the word "attempted" is being misused. Spike never intended to rape Buffy -- he wanted to give her what she wanted, which he thought was a beating in her bathroom followed by their traditional bout of rough sex (which she likes and he does to please her). As we all know, morality in the Buffyverse is dictated by the law books of California -- so there is no way it could have been "attempted" rape. If Buffy hadn't repeatedly misused her "no's" to mean "yes" this simple misunderstanding would never have happened. And nothing did happen. So no harm, no foul. Season Seven also brought up the possibility that Spike was a rapist in his presoul state, when he tells Buffy she doesn't want to know what he did to girls Dawn's age. Obviously Spike is lying, or he would have gone into details. He just wanted Buffy to stake him, and thought he could make it easier for her with the lie.

Finally, we get to the jacket. Spike only wears the slayer jacket as a symbol of respect for the strong warrior women he has faced in fair and equal combat. Women he has charitably helped end their suffering by fulfilling their Death Wishes. When he puts on the jacket, he becomes the slayer, the embodiment of all the feminine virtues. The jacket, more than anything else, proves that Spike is not a misogynist. Anyway, if Spike is a misogynist, then so are Angel, Xander, Wesley, Giles, Buffy, Forrest, Wood, Riley (well, that goes without saying), Owen, Lance, Principal Flutie (but not Snyder, oddly enough), Ethan, Xander's construction worker pals, Clem, Jonathan, and Andrew. Which proves that Spike isn't a misogynist, because misogyny is graded on a curve.

It's just a shame that Joss Whedon, James Marsters, and David Fury can't see that Spike is feminism. That calling him a misogynist is like calling Gandhi a warmonger, but then, what do you expect from a bunch of men. (Maybe we should take up a collection and buy them dictionaries.)
[> [> [> [> [> Disagreeing with one of your points -- Finn Mac Cool, 11:25:52 07/18/03 Fri

"April was a misogynybot -- a sentient creature built so Warren would have a woman to order around and demean."

I don't think this is quite the case. Why? These two lines of dialouge:



Buffy: "Are you saying . . . are you in love with her (April)?

Warren: "You know, I really thought I would be."



While the reality turned out to be different from Warren's fantasy, it does appear that Warren intended to create someone who not only would love him, but that he could love back. So I don't think it's really accurate to call April a "misogynybot".
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Disagreeing with one of your points -- Malandanza, 06:31:05 07/20/03 Sun

I was wondering how you could disagree with only one of my points :)

"While the reality turned out to be different from Warren's fantasy, it does appear that Warren intended to create someone who not only would love him, but that he could love back. So I don't think it's really accurate to call April a 'misogynybot'."

I think there are two paths people who criticize Warren for April take -- the first is that April was sentient and Warren was, in effect, treating a real person, who could feel pain, as a disposable sex object (which is more true of Parker or Spike/Harmony than Warren). I don't think robots are sentient, and trying to make them so would open up a number of issues regarding the Scoobies' treatment of the Buffybot.

The second path is looking at the programs Warren wrote for April and what they say about his view of women. This is where the legitimate (IMO) criticism lies. First consider the original programming -- the files of "things Warren likes" (including a couple of files on oral sex). His initial view of the perfect girlfriend was that she will do anything he asks, no matter what, and it pleases her when she pleases him. And she's totally devoted to him -- won't even look at another guy -- tosses them through windows when they make obscene suggestions.

But we hear that April can "feel" pain (a kind of feedback, according to Warren) when she displeases him, so somewhere along the way he programmed in the ability to do things that displeased him. Warren's previous idea of the "perfect" girlfriend, one who waited on him hand and foot, eager and willing to do his bidding, was unsatisfactory, so he makes some adjustments. And look at them -- he made a robot that could cry! Now he has the ability to hurt the robot and it will simulate tears of pain and contrition. But Warren isn't the perfect boyfriend, so we can imagine April spending most of her time in tears, which must have had an effect on Warren's conscience, since he altered the programming yet again. He didn't remove the ability to cry, but he programmed in that "tears are emotional blackmail" -- adding tears to the things that displease Warren file. So she has conflicting subroutines running -- she "feels" pain when she does something that displeases Warren, and her subroutines tell her to cry, but other subroutines tell her that tears are back, causing further pain subroutines to kick in. At this point, it appears that Warren's idea of the perfect girlfriend is someone who will do anything he wishes, someone he can abuse as he pleases, who will feel that pain and exhibit it to an extent that he feels like man when he sees her suffering for him but not to an extent that he will feel guilty about causing that pain.

So I do think that calling April a misogynybot is apt -- it was designed for abuse. What is promising about Warren in Season Five is that he has given up the robot in favor of a real girl who is nothing at all like April (except maybe in the possessive area) having found April to be ultimately unsatisfactory, in spite of all his subroutines designed to make her so.

But the robots were still stupid.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Improvement or just upping the ante? -- OnM, 08:20:47 07/20/03 Sun

Great post Mal! Two comments:

*** At this point, it appears that Warren's idea of the perfect girlfriend is someone who will do anything he wishes, someone he can abuse as he pleases, who will feel that pain and exhibit it to an extent that he feels like [a] man when he sees her suffering for him but not to an extent that he will feel guilty about causing that pain. ***

That's a truly brilliantly phrased, and dead accurate evaluation, IMHO. Bravo!

*** What is promising about Warren in Season Five is that he has given up the robot in favor of a real girl who is nothing at all like April (except maybe in the possessive area) having found April to be ultimately unsatisfactory, in spite of all his subroutines designed to make her so. ***

This one I disagree with. What I think has happened is that Warren has merely realized that current (for the Buffyverse)technology has too many practical limits on the levels of abuse he wishes to enjoy. I see the Aprilbot as his last hold on some faint grasp of morality-- he gets off by abusing women, but the robot, as you correctly note, isn't sentient. So, the abuse becomes insufficiently rewarding, since he initially knows deep down-- and eventually on the surface-- that the pain isn't real. The only way to get real pain is with a real woman.

The next step in the process is to torment a woman that has an extraordinary resistance to abuse, namely Buffy. This follows logically from the Aprilbot, because to Warren, Buffy is a sort of organic robot, so in his mind she's fair game.

After Buffy, Warren then moves to the penultimate goal-- abusing a normal, non-super-human woman, Katrina, incidentally his ex-girlfriend. Katrina resists, and Warren kills her. While the act is inadvertant, he feels no remorse and in fact gets off on it after the initial fear of capture is relieved.

The ultimate goal achieved-- murder without remorse-- the last step is to kill a powerful woman, and we are back to Buffy.

Supremely bad move, of course, but inevitable considering the progression over time.

Thoughts?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Where do you get the impression that Warren enjoyed abusing April? -- Finn Mac Cool, 09:30:06 07/20/03 Sun

He said that if she heard his voice and didn't respond, it would cause painful feedback. To me, this doesn't indicate a desire to abuse April, rather a desire to keep her under control. I never got any indication from "I Was Made to Love You" that Warren enjoyed causing April pain. Yes, he wanted her to be completely submissive to him, which isn't a good sign, but I saw no implied sadism in the Warren/April relationship. I think that, following the second half of Season 6, people are a little over-anxious to go back to every previous act of Warren's and dub it a misogynistic and/or sadistic act. Yes, his robot building was an early sign of the path he was on, but he had not yet descended to getting off on killing/hurting women. When he built April, all he was really after was someone who would do everything he wanted, love him unconditionally, and (this is important) be someone he could love back. Misogyny is the hatred of women, but Warren stated that, when he built April, he believed he would be in love with her, and it actually came as a surprise to him that he didn't. As such, I think dubbing April a "misogynybot" is inaccurate. Was she built according to chauvanistic/sexist ideas of a submissive woman? Yes. Was she created as a vehicle for misogynistic abuse? No.

P.S. I personally don't have a problem with the idea of Spike or Warren using a robot for sex, provided the robots are un-sentient (which is something of an iffy issue). While it may reveal some unpleasant sides of their personality in showing their views of the "perfect woman", the act itself I don't find morally repellent. However, in IWMTLY, it was implied that Warren used April while he was dating Katrina, which does bring him into the wrong.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> On the S5 DVD commentary... -- curious, 11:55:12 07/20/03 Sun

JE says they were paralleling Buffy and Warren. Buffy identifies with Warren. She sees she thought she wanted a perfect boyfriend (Riley) but wasn't as sensitive to his needs as she could have been. Warren was using April as a sex-bot and "perfect" girlfriend but wasn't really abusing her - he was just being insensitive to her feelings when he tired of her. April would have been happy to continue making Warren happy forever. He got bored with her perfection and didn't consider the consequences on April when he abandoned her. This is the ep where Buffy cancels her date with Ben because she realizes she isn't ready for a relationship yet.

I really don't think the "Warren as a murderous misogynist" was plotted in S5. They didn't even know there would be a S6. Although it is interesting that JE points out that Tara is the only one who expresses sympathy for Warren and he ends up murdering her in S6.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Actually this fits with DT -- curious, 12:13:24 07/20/03 Sun

Buffy/Spike are parallelled with Warren/Katrina in Dead Things. I'll leave it at that.

Spike also has some interesting interactions with Buffy and April in IWMTLY.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Xander had some sympathy, too -- Finn Mac Cool, 13:37:05 07/20/03 Sun

He clearly understood and sympathised with the sexbot fantasy.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Really? -- Sophist, 15:04:21 07/20/03 Sun

JE says they were paralleling Buffy and Warren. Buffy identifies with Warren. She sees she thought she wanted a perfect boyfriend (Riley) but wasn't as sensitive to his needs as she could have been.

I know I miss this stuff all the time, but wow. I never got this at all. Even having JE spell it out doesn't help -- I don't see the comparison at all. I'm starting to believe the writers were in their own world when it comes to Riley. Their world does not resemble my Earth world. Or maybe vice versa.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Really? -- curious, 15:55:02 07/20/03 Sun

Yeah. I have to say I didn't really see it until I heard the commentary. She mentions it several times. That was the main point of the ep - well to JE. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> I thought that -- Sophist, 16:02:15 07/20/03 Sun

the parallel was Riley = Warren, Buffy = April. I still think that makes more sense. Silly me.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I thought that -- Miss Edith, 10:24:26 07/21/03 Mon

I thought that as well. Riley wanted Buffy to be the perfect girl for him, and there were suggestions that he would have prefered Buffy to be more needy and dependent on him. Just as Warren thought that's what he wanted with April.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Where do you get the impression that Warren enjoyed abusing April? -- Malandanza, 20:31:54 07/20/03 Sun

"He said that if she heard his voice and didn't respond, it would cause painful feedback. To me, this doesn't indicate a desire to abuse April, rather a desire to keep her under control."

Except Warren programmed her. He could have made it so she had to respond to his voice -- that there was no other option. Instead, he opted for a more elaborate set of coding where April sometimes does not respond to his voice and gets the feedback as a result. He didn't build a willing slave, he built an unwilling slave.

"Yes, his robot building was an early sign of the path he was on, but he had not yet descended to getting off on killing/hurting women."

There are more forms of abuse than just physical abuse. Consider this quote (appropriately enough from Pygmalion):

LIZA. Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her.

Warren built a robot that could cry. Buffy was right -- he was a creepy man.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> The crying had to be built in due to his desire to make her love him -- Finn Mac Cool, 21:22:01 07/20/03 Sun

Warren clearly said that he built April so that she could love him, and his tone suggested he didn't mean just in the physical sense. When he programmed April, he tried very hard to get her to simulate real human emotion, to make her actually feel love for him. Whether he succeeded in creating an emotional being or only created an imitation of one is up for debate. However, in trying to make a creature capable of love, you inevitably must make them capable of the emotions attached to love, such as grief or anger over rejection. How else do you explain the built in growl function?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> He could have programmed --(Warning-just a little bit graphic for our teen audience) -- Arethusa, 12:23:08 07/21/03 Mon

in both the tears and growling because they turned him on. It gets some guys excited to make their girlfriend cry. (Which is also extremely creepy.) And he could have programmed her to growl during sex. I think he programmed her to do whatever would turn him on, not to necessarily simulate real emotions, although that might have been a goal.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> At the very least, he seemed to want her to simulate love -- Finn Mac Cool, 14:44:47 07/21/03 Mon

So he may very well have programmed in other emotions, provided they weren't contradictory to loving him.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Sure. -- Arethusa, 23:46:10 07/21/03 Mon

One thing about Warren, though-he didn't really seem to understand emotions. He didn't understand why Katrina was angry at being pushed aside in IWMTLY. He did not form an emotional connection with Andrew or Jonathan, who were probably his only friends. His come-ons to the girls in the bar were patronizing and nauseating. Yet he was able to understand Andrew and Jonathan well enough to maniipulate them, and at one time attracted Katrina. But whenever he lost control of a situation, his first instinct was to take it back by force. So what was the source of all his violence? Being pushed around in school? That might have contributed to his problems, but doesn't turn most people into psychos. Perhaps it was his tremendous ego.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Different take+Spike arc -- sdev, 12:03:49 07/20/03 Sun

"I see the Aprilbot as his last hold on some faint grasp of morality-- he gets off by abusing women, but the robot, as you correctly note, isn't sentient. So, the abuse becomes insufficiently rewarding, since he initially knows deep down-- and eventually on the surface-- that the pain isn't real. The only way to get real pain is with a real woman."

I don't agree because Katrina is not real or sentient when Warren reclaims her under the power of the cerebral dampener. Essentially she becomes the Katrinabot- blindly obeying, unaware of her surroundings, totally focused on subservience. When she begins to awaken from the robotic affects of the dampener, Warren hastens to try to put her under again. Because she is not a sentient being under the control of the cerebral dampener, this is basically a regression for Warren. First he tries the Aprilbot and sometime after that he meets Katrina who he falls for. He contrasts the two-- April became boring, too predictable; Katrina OTOH was not predictable and she liked him on her own. Boring could be a code word for compliant. I'm not sure. The misogynist in him would need and enjoy the struggle, as you pointed out. In any event, real life Katrina made him realize the inadequacy of a robot. It seems pretty clear that he was enjoying some normal type of relationship with Katrina and trying to put his robot days behind him. Yes, this does appear to be a step forward for Warren, the man everyone seems comfortable admitting was a true red-blooded misogynist.

The step back comes when he decides to use the cerebral dampener on a woman in the bar. Katrina became the choice target of opportunity. He spends about a minute trying to reconcile with her without force, and then resorts to turning her into a robot. He cannot handle the real woman, the real rejection. He goes right back to robot without the plasticene.

Spike and Warren's arcs intersect in a very interesting way. Both resort to robots when they can't get the girl. Spike's difference, and it is a big one IMO, he wants a specific girl, not a generic girlfriend. Spike is infatuated with Buffy, can't have a relationship with her and resorts to a juvenile fantasy in which his dreams come true--he gets his heart's desire. Consistent with this, Spike takes pains to program the Buffybot so she imitates his perception of the real Buffy, only nice to him. Another major difference, Spike abhors any suggestion that the robot is a robot. His first comment--"she's too shiny." Also later on when she refers to her "program" he tells her never to mention it. He also did not program her to be slavishly subservient. His goal, however misguided is to have a real Buffy who is crazy about him. He wants as real life a model as possible because anything less would ruin the fantasy.

In contrast, Warren does not seem to want the illusion of reality. He really does not care if the robots are robotlike April and Katina are both programmed to be docile and submissive and to serve. Katrina under the cerebral dampener calls the trio "Master." While he complains that April bored him, he reverts to that quickly. Better boring than real life rejection and a mind of her own. He is looking for and has created a prototype of a girlfriend. It is telling that within a few minutes of close contact with April, everyone realizes that she is a robot. However with the Buffybot no one realizes she is a robot until Buffy herself shows up and confronts them insultedly.

The intersection of the Spike and Warren arcs continues. Warren moves forward to a normal relationship with Katrina and then regresses and makes Katrina a robot via the dampener and then accidentally kills her. As you said, "Katrina resists, and Warren kills her. While the act is inadvertent, he feels no remorse and in fact gets off on it after the initial fear of capture is relieved." This is very true. Warren in fact bullies Jonathon and Andrew out of their remorse as well. This control Warren has over the other two makes me wonder why he could not attract and hold a woman's attention on his own, no tricks. His misogyny obliterates any innate social skills and leaves him a shell of a person.

Spike progresses from the robot phase as well, but never ends up in the same place as Warren. He abandons the robot at the end of Intervention when Buffy, with one small act of human kindness and emotion, a kiss to thank Spike for protecting Dawn's identity as the Key from Glory, wipes away any hope that the fantasy the robot embodied would ever suffice again. Thereafter he has nothing but contempt for the Buffybot. He never regresses into believing a robot is an adequate substitute for the real thing. He has grown up in that respect.

The not-so-parallel parallels continue, however. Now to the infamous is he or isn't he a misogynist attempted rape scene. Regardless of how one interprets that scene as actual attempted rape morally or under the law or falling short of that, I think most can agree that this is Spike's moment of regression. Heretofore, whether one hated the Buffy and Spike relationship, felt there was verbal manipulation, nagging, or sexual using, there was no physical force by Spike on Buffy to compel sex. Her consent to sex was clearly present before this scene. Spike's response, like Warren's with robot Katrina, was triggered by rejection. Buffy had ended their relationship and made pretty clear in Normal Again when Spike came to her room, "You are not a part of my life." The AR is a regression to the vampire Spike who did not take no for an answer. That he was not in Vampire face does not change who he had been for the previous 125 years or so. Force and compulsion were habitual and in a crisis, his own personal crisis, he resorted to what he knew.

Here again is where the Warren and Spike parallels diverge. And whether one believes Spike would have stopped on his own had Buffy not thrown him off is also irrelevant for this next point. The fact is he did totally desist once Buffy threw him off. Also, he clearly has remorse. Whether the remorse is conflicted with thoughts of 'why the hell should I be conflicted' also does not controvert the remorse. It is still present. In fact the conflicted nature of Spike's feelings are what makes the remorse so powerful. He was who he was. And he is deeply confused by who he now is. The scene in Hell's Bells demonstrate with humor this conflict-- he wants Buffy to hurt and be jealous when he brings a date to the wedding but on the other hand cannot stand to see her in pain and agrees to leave to make it easier for her. In contrast as you noted about Warren killing Katrina, "The ultimate goal achieved-- murder without remorse-- the last step is to kill a powerful woman." Warren has no remorse. He enjoys the killing and getting away with it.

The parallels separate even further by the post-bad act behavior of Warren and Spike. Warren immediately puts into place an elaborate cover-up scheme that not only hides his commission of murder but also implicates another innocent person as the murderer, Buffy. He says he cannot go to jail. He refuses to take a painful route to pay for his actions, and opts to escape from any responsibility. Spike goes in the opposite direction. Again, motives may be arguable but actions are not. He embarks on an extremely painful endeavor to improve himself, "become what I once was." Through harrowing trials he regains his soul and thus attempts to ensure that the violent regression of the AR will not recur.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Buffy was using Spike as a sexbot -- curious, 12:22:50 07/20/03 Sun

I think it was murkier than that. I really think Buffy was parallelled with Warren (as she was explicitly in IWMTLY) and Spike with Katrina in DT. That's what Buffy felt guilty about. I don't think anything in S6 was a clear - "this person was GOOD and that person was BAD" (with the possible exception of Tara). I think S6 is about doing horrible things and not being able to deal with the consequences very maturely - especially in Warren's case. He was the one who went the furthest - or was it Willow??? hmmm....

Yikes! I don't have time to write a lot here so I have to be brief. Might write more later.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Buffy was using Spike as a sexbot-Agree -- sdev, 12:42:02 07/20/03 Sun

In DT that is what comes across to me. Although most would not have trouble seeing that Buffy and Warren are eons apart despite what may be interpreted as Buffy's use and or abuse of Spike. After all, Spike was not a robot nor was he artificially compelled to act the part.

I was just addressing the thread topic of misogyny and the Warren/Spike parallels which are pretty striking since they both resorted to actual robots, and the somewhat closer, some may feel parallel, relationship of both to misogyny.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Everyone was parralleled with Warren -- Finn Mac Cool, 13:33:36 07/20/03 Sun

Spike, Buffy, Xander, Anya, Willow, and Dawn all had deep, personal issues in Season Six, and Warren acted as the embodiment of all of them.

Spike - both had to deal with a strong woman(en) who would not submit to their desires.

Buffy - both treated someone else as an object.

Xander - both had to deal with the knowledge/belief that they are becoming/will become a monster.

Anya - both were hurt by people and try to make up for that by hurting them in return.

Willow - both thirsted for power and control to make their lives not so hard.

Dawn - both felt unnoticed and unappreciated by the world, and so commited illegal acts to finally be noticed and acknowledged.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> LOL! That's true! -- curious, 15:56:04 07/20/03 Sun

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Everyone was parralleled with Warren-Agree -- sdev, 17:00:39 07/20/03 Sun

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Improvement or just upping the ante? -- Malandanza, 19:35:29 07/20/03 Sun

"So, the abuse becomes insufficiently rewarding, since he initially knows deep down-- and eventually on the surface-- that the pain isn't real. The only way to get real pain is with a real woman."

Looking at pre-season six Warren, and I don't the Warren/Katrina relationship was about Warren abusing women (emotionally, I mean -- we never saw any physical abuse between Warren and Katrina or April). If anything, it seemed to me that the roles were reversed. Warren was pleading for understanding in a desperate attempt to keep Katrina happy while she just walked away. Had April been a real girl rather than a robot, I'd call it poetic justice.

Nor do I think that Warren set out, in Season Six, to find a woman to abuse and dominate. Too much was left to chance -- the formation of the Trio, Katrina being at the wrong place, the mind controller fading unexpectedly, the accidental killing. None of this was planned. Now the invisibility and mind control certainly were not driven by feminist notions of equality, but I think they all of the boys were having difficulty with fantasy/reality at that point -- as evidenced by the Jonathan/Andrew light saber fight while Warren is dragging Katrina off to rape her.

"While the act is inadvertent, he feels no remorse and in fact gets off on it after the initial fear of capture is relieved."

I don't know that this is true. I think Warren did feel some remorse and his subsequent decline (he is a very different character in the last part of the season) is evidence of it. He felt somewhat insulated from his crime after the cover-up, certainly, but he seemed to be following Faith's path -- heading deeper and deeper into evil to try to outrun his conscience. Unfortunately for Warren, instead of Angel waiting to save him at the end of the flight, it was Willow waiting to torture and murder him. And speaking of Willow, I have always felt that the Katrina apparition was not Katrina's shade summoned from whatever heavenly or hellish dimension it had gone to, but a manifestation of Warren's guilt -- Willow reaching into Warren's subconscious, waking his torpid conscience, and bringing all his guilt and fears back into his conscious mind,
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Have to say -- KdS, 02:18:33 07/21/03 Mon

In my opinion, if you rewrite IWMTLY to show Warren consciously torturing April, you lose a lot of the coolness of his descent into evil in S6.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Improvement or just upping the ante?Question -- sdev, 09:45:23 07/21/03 Mon

"The next step in the process is to torment a woman that has an extraordinary resistance to abuse, namely Buffy."

Are you saying that the goal of what the Trio did to Buffy was to torture her? I thought their purpose was to thwart her because they were taking over Sunnydale and she was, or presumably would be, in their way.

Please elaborate.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Possible answer -- OnM, 19:55:33 07/21/03 Mon

*** Are you saying that the goal of what the Trio did to Buffy was to torture her? I thought their purpose was to thwart her because they were taking over Sunnydale and she was, or presumably would be, in their way. ***

How one views this depends on the way one interprets the actual intent of the Trio, which I maintain is different for each member of the group. The stated goal of the group as a whole was indeed to 'thwart' Buffy, but just how would they accomplish this?

Warren would have been happy to do what actually would have been the most sensible, practical thing given the stated goal, which was simply to kill Buffy. Jonathan and Andrew strongly objected to this, so Warren backed down, at least initially. If Buffy isn't going to be killed outright, then 'thwarting her' pretty much means making her suffer in some fashion or another. That Jonathan and Andrew don't fully make the connection between 'thwarting' and 'suffering' is an indication of how disassociated they are.

Warren, on the other hand, isn't disassociated from inflicting suffering on women, he in fact gets off on this. Note that his first 'thwarting' attempt is to plant a device that compresses time in some way so that everyone speeds up fantastically around Buffy. Warren, in effect, 'steals time' from her. Think about this in a death context, metaphorically. Also, Buffy keeps getting physically bashed into by the speeded-up rest of the world, and finally has to hide under a bench or table (I forget which) to keep from being trampled. So, there is a pain context also.

Andrew, whose skill lies in summoning demons, calls up a few nasty ones and has them attack Buffy at the construction site where Xander has given her a job. Andrew admires/is infatuated with Warren, so he also tries to emulate Warren's methods (i.e. cause pain and a risk of death). The difference is that he truly doesn't understand that the pain and risk of death he is causing is real-- to him, Buffy is like a cartoon character in a video game. You just hit 'reset' and start over. He doesn't see Buffy as human, but he isn't misogynistic, really.

Jonathan is the most interesting one. Jonathan actually kind of likes Buffy, and most certainly doesn't want to hurt her physically. He is the one who most strongly opposes Warren whenever Warren talks about killing someone, including Buffy. His 'thwarting' tactic is to make her figure out a difficult puzzle. It's a mental challenge, which makes sense to Jonathan. The other two members talk about finding out about what makes Buffy tick (so they can thwart her), but only Jonathan actually does this. Warren-- and his droog Andrew-- go for the kill, albeit indirectly.

Sorry if this is rambly, late here! Does this make any sense?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Possible answer- thanks -- sdev, 23:16:53 07/21/03 Mon

Need to think about this and maybe rewatch some stuff.

Never really saw Warren's actions to Buffy as per se misogynistic except at the end after Buffy had already interfered with his scheme. Certainly, as you said, he initiated the idea of killing her. I thought that because of his underlying misogynism, that when Buffy thwarted him it set him off; he certainly couldn't handle being undermined by a woman, slayer or not, particularly in front of Jonathon and Andrew who he wanted to impress and lead.

But I can see in your description of the trial he set for Buffy, the pain, and even more so the humiliation of making Buffy cower, smacks of Warren's brand of misogynism. He seems to get off on the servility.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.
[> [> [> [> [> [> D'oh! Upon re-reading, I should have realised this post was satirical -- Finn Mac Cool, 19:23:09 07/18/03 Fri

[> [> [> [> [> I am in awe! -- Rahael, 09:02:46 07/19/03 Sat

[> [> [> [> [> Wonderful satire. I loved it. (NT) -- dmw, 16:29:21 07/18/03 Fri

[> I agree with this -- curious, 16:24:01 07/16/03 Wed

from Diana's post below

Especially this:
Buffy is representative of WOMAN. Buffy's self hatred and Dark Willow's jealousy of her are as much an example of mysogyny as Spike in "Dead Things." Joss did NOT specifically say that Spike was a mysogynist. He said that the relationship was about deep mysogyny (control and dominance as well). Joss' art form is words. He chooses his words carefully. I think we should be looking at the flow of those words rather than seeing red at a particular one.

I think he was talking about S6 exploring misogyny, control and dominance in general - rather than calling Spike a misogynist. That's how I read that line too. I also think he confused the hell out of a lot of people in S6.
[> Re: New post about the JW S6 misogyny thread -- RJA, 17:06:17 07/16/03 Wed

I posted this down on the original thread, and sicne curious suggested I post it here too, I will.

On the misogyny issue, I think perhaps that if Joss did mean that the relationship dealt with it, he could be referring to how it was handled in Seeing Red, and more specifically, they were looking at the human weakness that could lead to that, and in a wider sense that went futher than the issues of misogny.

I viewed Warren in many ways as a counterpoint to Spike (not all the time, but where their paths crossed he seemed to be). The first distinction came with their respective Bots. Warren created one because he couldnt get girls - April existed as his example of the perfect woman, which essentially was a subservient sex machine. Whereas Spike's Bot wasnt a subsitute for women, but instead a way of being closer to a particular woman he couldnt have. Whereas April was designed to eradicate the flaws and complexities of women, Spike had to settle for something that didnt have those flaws - and it was settling because he wanted the real thing. So thats the first comparison the show made, IMO.

Carrying it to the end, I think another parallel was made with Warren and Spike in Seeing Red. I think both their actions came from the same place, the same spark. And that was fear, desparation, and an inability to be in control.

Warren ended up shooting Buffy because she represented everything that was wrong in his life, and as he saw it, women were to blame for everything that went wrong. And as the most powerful woman, the Slayer had to be taken down. BY feeling so powerless and emasculated, he had to take it out on the person who symbolised those feelings of emasculation. And as subsequent episodes showed, he had no remorse.

And I think Spike's actions came from a similar place. That fear - his life was shot, he no longer knew his place in it, and his relationship with Buffy made him even less sure of that. I think part of his actions in SR was a desperate attempt to put some control back into that relationship - not to control Buffy, but a desperate need to put some control back into his life.

Thats the difference as I see it. Whereas Warren blamed his failures on women, and saw Buffy personifying this, Spike didnt have that same opinion of women. Instead of blaming Buffy for all that was wrong, he turned it onto himself. He was to blame, and he made a change because of it. He took responsibility out of that moment of desperation, whereas Warren didnt.

And there is also the connection with Willow. Magic as a means to control, which also happens in Seeing Red. But thats maybe subject for another post.

So I guess I have no real idea of what Joss meant by his above comments, other than that this particular episode contained an examination of the spark of what can make good people go bad, and what can be the basis of wrongs in society.

Anyway, be kind :-)
[> Re-examining S6, Willow as the villain? What went right? What went wrong? -- s'kat, 21:49:18 07/16/03 Wed

From Diana's post below:

So the debate should be about how season 6 got lost. Why did it get lost? How could they have kept the focus on control, dominance and deep mysogyny? How did Willow end up becoming the villain in THIS particular season?

Good questions. Let's break them up:

1. How did Willow end up becoming the villain of S6?

Was it a natural progression? Or out of the blue?
What if any comment does this make on control, dominance and misogyny? And why this season as opposed to S5 or S4 or even s3? And how does it parallel B/S?

2. Did S6 get lost? If so how? When?

Did they lose Buffy in S6? Did it happen in Gone? Earlier than that? What would have been a better route? Or was it necessary to lose Buffy to get to where they were headed in S7? Does S7 justify S6?

3. How is the theme of dominance, control and misogyny expressed in S6 outside of the AR scene or Spike. How is it expressed through Buffy and Willow and Anya and Xander?
What issues were explored? How were they resolved?
Were they resolved?


(Okay, you'll probably hate me for this but unfortunately I have no time to explore any of these issues myself, it's late and I have to get up early tomorrow...so if interested? Have fun. If not? ignore me. ;-) Although I think we did explore many of these issues last year - see May and June archives.)

sk
[> [> Since I started it, I will respond briefly -- Diana (who will now explain where lunasea came from), 10:10:58 07/17/03 Thu

The moon and water are traditionally two forms of the feminine archetype. The phases of the moon and the ebb and flow of the tide are an important part of the feminine. That combined with the whole mystery thing are a pretty good description of me. Hence, my old name.

The anima does not have this component. The feminine that Joss is showing isn't the totality that is the feminine. Marti added that into the show. Her scripts really show what it means.

I'm still the President of the "Marti is the Goddess of all things Twisted and if You Want to Say Anything Negative about Her You Better be Prepared to Feel the Points of my Stilettoes and the Sting of My Whip" Club, however, in order to understand where S6 went "wrong," one has to look no further than her one bad episode "She."

Topic of "She"? Control, dominance and mysogyny. That isn't what Marti writes. Her's isn't the simple play of masculine and anima that Joss does so well. Marti plays with the ebb and flow that is the feminine. When she lost that, when she lost Buffy, she didn't have a focus any more.

To be honest, it fit with the season and I think contibuted to the feeling. In that sort of deep depression, you do feel lost. I think the flow of the shows did this so well because they got so lost that people felt it. It isn't something that most want to feel and they reacted extremely harshly.

They could have had a very "9 1/2 Weeks" Spuffy that would have maintained Joss' desired focus. I don't think this would have hit people like S6 did.

Just another perspective. Joss says they got lost. I think getting lost was a good thing. There was a post a while ago, does a sex scene fail if it squicks you. What about a whole season?

It was their most ambitious season and I think Marti did a great job. There was nothing for her to focus on. I became Buffy and anytime I do that, I consider it a success.
[> [> [> 'She'? -- Rina, 10:47:19 07/17/03 Thu

I've never heard of an episode called "She". Which season was it in?
[> [> [> [> 'She' is in Angel The Series, S1. -- sk, 11:00:57 07/17/03 Thu

[> [> [> [> Season 1 over on Angel - Lucky episode 13 -- Diana, 11:02:01 07/17/03 Thu

[> [> [> Agree with you on Marti and more or less on S6 -- s'kat, 11:46:26 07/17/03 Thu

Marti gets a bad rap, which I too find somewhat annoying on the boards. I happen to really enjoy this writer. So she has a few bad episodes, they all do. I haven't liked all of Joss Whedon's episodes either (I Fall To Pieces, Waiting in The Wings, Ted - to name a few). And yes, she can be somewhat aggravating in interviews - but who isn't? Honestly, can anyone on this board say there hasn't been a time in our lives where we were either misunderstood, or put our foot in our mouths? I do think people judge her far too harshly. Forgetting to give her credit for some truly excellent scripts and Buffyverse episodes.

I've always found Marti's take on things interesting - as David Fury puts it in his commentary for Real Me and Primeval - they go to Marti whenever they need an emotional impact scene. Such as boyfriend/girlfriend moments (in The Real Me) or the girlfriend/girlfriend bonding in Primeval. So she has actually written portions of other people's episodes that we don't even know about.

If you loved Season 2? Then you love Marti Noxon. Marti wrote more episodes in S2 than just about anyone else and it was her first year with the team. She wrote What's My Line (that was her first episode, and what an episode - the Dru/Spike/Angel torture scene alone is worth making that one memorable) Surprise, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Bad Eggs, I Will Only Have Eyes for You. Her use of metaphors is a little different than Whedon but I don't believe she drops them as some people seem to believe.


Marti introduced a wicked sensuality to the show, playing with the idea of S&M and the dark side of passion - something Whedon had begun to explore briefly in S1 with the Pack and Angel, and clearly felt the need to explore further with the Spike/Dru relationship. He found the person to help him do it with Marti. Marti added a complexity to the romantic relationships as well as a moral ambiguity.

Without Marti - we wouldn't have The Wish, an incredibly dark and trippy episode and/or the character of Anyanka. I believe Marti took the show to a deeper more interesting level in some ways. Was she perfect? No. But no one is.

It was their most ambitious season and I think Marti did a great job. There was nothing for her to focus on. I became Buffy and anytime I do that, I consider it a success.

Agreed. The season worked for me - for those reasons as well. I may have viewed certain aspects of the season differently than you have, but I did really like it, just for different reasons, if that makes any sense. I also became or empathized closely with Buffy in S6 possibly more so than any of the other seasons combined. (With possible exception of S2). If you didn't emphasize with Buffy or become her, then you may have hated the season. Or felt detached from it. But that can happen to anyone in any season of the show. I couldn't identify with Buffy in S3 very much - which most posters put at the top of their list of great seasons, but since I felt emotionally detached from it - it's not at mine. YMMV. ;-)

Thanks for posting that, Diana.

sk
[> [> [> [> Didn't Marti write -- Diana (sorry, but I have to gush about MARTI), 12:23:59 07/17/03 Thu

the Willow/supposed to be Tara scenes in CwDP as well?

The woman has heart, wrapped up in her twisted sexuality. Just like Marti nailed Buffy/Spike (I decided I don't like the term Spuffy, because it puts Spike first and others do find it demeaning) in "Wrecked" better than anyone else with a single scene, she did the same thing with Buffy/Angel in the often denigrated "Bad Eggs." That isn't exactly easy to do. She nailed Angelus in "IOHEFY" and his relationship with Dru and Spike. She nailed Buffy/Angel after the breakup in "Forever," reversing "Bad Eggs." Marti does a whole lot of nailing. Riley is synonymous with Marti (that may be why some hate her though). "Buffy v Dracula" is probably the best stand alone episode and I show it to people I want to suck into the Buffyverse.

Would Joss have been inspired to write "Innocence" if say Greenwalt had written "Surprise"? "Amends" has to follow "The Wish." Only Marti could follow "The Body" and keep emotions that high. Marti-Joss deliver the best 1-2 punch in the Buffverse.

Looking back, the way the audience totally crucified her for S6, her cameo in OMWF is so appropriate.

It is hard to pick a favorite writer in the Buffyverse for me. It is a hard tie between Joss, Marti and the Tim Reaper. So as President of the Marti club, you can be Co-president if you want. In the precedent that Marti set by being the one that got to write more than one Slayer, we should have more than one President. Lots of Presidents, per Chosen.

And Rob can bring his pom-poms.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Didn't Marti write -- Yellow bear, 13:32:44 07/17/03 Thu

Loving the Marti love. Ms. Noxon has been the whipping boy of Buffy bashers for far too long.

I wanted to post briefly above Whedon's use of the word 'lost' in CFX interview. Some people have seized on this to indicate the writers got 'lost' during the season in regards to Willow-as-big-bad arc. I did not take it this way. I think of the phrase 'How lost did we get' as being a rhetorical device with the 'we' being a stand in for the characters getting lost (deliberately lost if you will since the whole season is about the wilderness that is your early twenties) not an indication of the staff getting lost. Big bad Willow was where S6 was heading all along (from numerous interviews & just the text itself) so how lost could the staff be about her being the BB.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Didn't Marti write- agree on lost -- sdev, 14:28:14 07/17/03 Thu

"How lost did we get? Well, our villain turned out to be Willow."

The scene in Smashed with Xander, Anya and Buffy discussing what is going on with Willow synopsizes what JW was talking about here:

Buffy says "But it's Willow, she of the level head." And Anya answers "those are the ones you have to watch out for the most. Responsible types." Further Anya says, " I'm serious. Responsible people are ... always so concerned with ... being good all the time, that when they finally get a taste of being bad ... they can't get enough. It's like all kablooey. Then Xander says, " It's human nature, Buff. Will's getting a taste of something powerful, way bigger than her."

So how lost did they get? The stable, stolid, you-can-count-on-me Willow went off the deep end and nearly destroyed the world.

I agree JW is talking about the character and how extreme they took her
[> [> [> [> [> Yes, she wrote that section of CwDP -- s'kat, 14:47:09 07/17/03 Thu

Marti wrote the Cassie/Willow segment of CwDP - see the RRK, JE, and DG Succubus Club interview for evidence, as well as other assorted interviews. The breakdown for those interested is: JE: Dawn, Joss Whedon: Buffy/Holden, Drew Goddard: Spike, Jonathan/Andrew/Warren, Marti Noxon: Willow/Cassie. The only people who are credited are JE and DG b/c Marti and Joss are co-executive producers and they didn't want to get paid twice - if you get a writers credit you apparently have to be paid by union rules or something -Whedon explains it one of the interviews he gave this spring, I believe. And, yes, I agree, MArti nails Willow in my humble opinion. Also does a very good job with Angelus, Spike and Dru - far better than Fury does, not sure why this is. Shame she wasn't able to write more episodes this season.

In Season 6, she actually wrote very very few. The only ones were Bargaining Part I (which I actually I loved and preferred over Bargaining Part II in some ways...),
Wrecked (yes, I know I'm one of the few people who actually liked parts of Wrecked. I did. I found her use of the empty dress as a metaphor with Willow brilliant and the opening scene with B/S very raw and very interesting, coupled with the later scene in his crypt and the scene in the alley. Wrecked is a very interesting episode, which I believe is underrated by some posters do to their dislike of the magic addiction storyline), Villains (another very interesting
metaphorical episode - loved Willow sucking the text up her arms and Spike's scenes with Lurky, and Dawn's discovery of Tara, not to mention the scenes in Clem's crypt and the flaying of Warren Mears. Marti isn't afraid to make the audience go whoa!).

I think Marti may have been one of the few writers who got Riley. In Season 5 -- she writes Into the Woods and the Riley/Spike dynamic works. It should have worked in reverse in AYW, I wish Marti had written it instead of Petrie, since I think it might have come out better for both Riley and Sam.

She also is responsible for Tara - Tara was Marti Noxon's suggestion. She suggested Amber for the role - Whedon wanted to go with someone more Fredlike. Marti said Amber was perfect. Marti wrote New Moon Rising, Wild at Heart that year.

She's an interesting writer. For a transcript of her take on Season 6 - see the archives around March - I transcribed it from SFX. She explains a few things - that she felt worked and felt didn't work. Acknowledges to an extent that
OAFA didn't quite work the way they wished and things got a bit rushed towards the end.

I honestly think she and Joss Whedon worked as a team in S5 and S6 and S7...regardless of what the rumors state.

Oh no need to make me a co-President.;-) But rest assured I do love and appreciate Marti's writing. It's risky, no-holds barred at times. Wish more television writers were as willing to go there.

(I honestly think most of the dislike of MArti arises from things she or others say in interviews which people overreact to. Again I caution people (speaking generally here, not to a specific person) to take what is said in an interview with a bit of a grain of salt - this is after all going through the interviewers filter, it's not the same as a commentary or season rundown. Also more often than not, the person is joking with the interviewer and just as sarcasm and sardonic wit seldom translates well on this board, it doesn't translate well in interviews - you need to hear the person's voice and see facial expressions as well. It's why I left a bunch of stuff out of my Succubus Club transcript of Minear and Fury - b/c they crack jokes that you honestly can't tell are jokes unless you listen to the interview.)

sk
[> [> [> [> [> [> Warning. Slightly bashy towards Marti -- Miss Edith, 15:39:48 07/17/03 Thu

Sometimes I do feel bad for Marti because as someone else put it once, "Nearly every Buffy fan on the internet hates her, and she knows it". I believe she stopped lurking on-line after reading a post from someone writing a fantasy of Spike and Dru torturing and killing her? I'm sure that's what I heard anyway?

I have criticized Marti for her show running in season 6, I still think it could have been better. But I have always said the episodes she writers are generally very good, and work for me just fine. The interviews less so.

The main reasons why Buffy fans seem to dig the knife in is because of specific story arcs in season 6. Firstly making Willow and Amy magic crack addicts started with Wrecked, and is by and large seen as green-lighted by Marti. The second is of course Spuffy. The fans who didn't like Spuffy seem to have a tendency to hold Marti at fault. Particularly after she has admitted basing B/S on a past relationship. All the use of naked Spike, put off some fans.

But the majority of Spuffy fans certainly don't care for Marti any more than those who were against Spuffy. Call them naive, but a lot of B/S fans connected with late season 5, following Intervention. In early season 6 (Afterlife, LS, OMWF, TR) they believed a beautiful love story was developing. It was commonly assumed that Spike would redemn himself through love, and that was where the writers were taking us. Therefore a lot of B/S fans blame Marti for making the relationship as sick as it was. Personally I found the B/S dynamic from Smashed onwards complelling stuff. I also found it in character, and more interesting than a repeat of B/A, which is what B/S was at risk of being if the writers continued with Spike and Buffy not having sex, and Spike geninely trying to help Buffy. Marti's interviews at the time did make me look at season 6 less favourably, but now I am more objecitve I can say parts of it really worked for me. It was not the unmitigated disaster that some fans unfairly accuse Marti of creating.

It's the fact that Marti requested the AR to teach the B/S fans a moral lesson about choosing the good guy that really lost me. I just hated what that did to James, I found it hurtful and disrespectful. I also hated the calculating way it was used, knowing many of Spike and B/S fans were women, a lot of people felt it was almost a personal attack directed at female fans of Spike. I just didn't like how the AR wasn't thought through properly, and the way it divided the fans. If you are going to throw in something so controversial with one of the most popular characters, you should be damn ready to deal with the consequences of that is my opinion. I was on-line when SR aired, and some people were just ripping others apart. The repurcussion are still felt on-line today. I am aware that I'm being irrational and unfair, but the AR is the reason I cannot care for Marti all that much, although sometimes I feel bad about all the abuse she gets.

To be fair to Marti I think the fans are just a lot more hostile post season 5 anyway. The hatred sems to be building for Joss as well, I have heard more than one person calling him pompous with an overblown ego following his interviews. Something almost unheard of previously. (People used to call him God, now when he talks of wanting Bts to change the entire world, people say he needs to get over himself). So Marti is not the only victim of fans bashing the writers. I'm not sure how much that would comfort her though :) And Fury receives his fair share of hate mail, but from what I heard he loves to get a reaction anyway, and has always welcomed pushing peoples buttons and getting a strong response. Joss is always talking of pissing fans off, and that being important to him because then he knows he has got people to take notice. (When recently told most fans were happy with the finale, his response was Oh damn, I really hoped fans would be annoyed with me). Marti seems more fragile than that, and genuinely hurt with some fans response to her. I do feel for her there.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Warning. Respectful toward Marti -- Just George, 00:22:33 07/18/03 Fri

I hate to watch Spike's attempted rape of Buffy. I have watched the last couple of episodes of Season 6 several times. I almost always start just after the rape scene.

However, at the time the attempted rape seemed dramatically necessary. It grew organically out of Buffy's mixed signals and Spike's obsession/desperation. In retrospect it is almost impossible for me to imagine the arc of S6, or the S6 and S7 arcs of Buffy or Spike without it.

I have also heard that Marti is the person that suggested it was a dramatic necessity for Spike to try and rape Buffy. It was another example of her willingness to go where other writers feared to tread. BTVS was the better for her fearlessness.

-JG
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Warning. Respectful toward Marti -- Miss Edith, 12:10:06 07/18/03 Fri

I guess that's just where we differ. At the time the AR really offended me, and I will never think it was a good idea to use it in the way that the writers did. I am aware that it's petty of me, but some part of me will never really forgive Marti for the AR, it just devestated fans at the time. I had read all the spoilers, but I can just imagine how the Spike fans who were caught unaware felt. Or the Buffy fans who had to sit through the commerical break to find out whether she would be raped or not.

On another board there was a poster who really affected me at the time. She had been sexually abused by her father. Yet she loved the character of Spike, not because she fantasised about serial killers, but because we should be free to enjoy any characters for entertaimment purposes, regardless of what David Fury thinks. This poster checked out links to pictures of the attack follwing the wildfeed. (It was a spoiler board). I just remember how utterly distraught she was, her favourite show had been ruined for her, and she couldn't even face watching the episode. It just made me consider all the people with siniliar experiences who would tune in to that episode without warning. It wasn't even dealth with responsibly, it was simply used as a plot twist. I remember at the end of season 5 rumours were circulating that Spike would go evil and turn Buffy in the finale episode. Now at the time I thought that plot would pretty much suck, but it never hit me in the way that the AR did.

And sorry this is all getting rather O/T. A lot of people seem to absolutely despise Marti. I'll just say that in her interviews (such as not not understanding season 5's arc, and getting themes of season 5 and 6 muddled up) she doesn't always come across well. But hey I lack tact too and am not always great at expressing myself, I don't think it makes Marti the devil or anything like that. She gets a bad rep.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> going off on tangent thinking about SR and The Forsyth Saga -- MsGiles, 09:04:18 07/22/03 Tue

I should say now, I don't intend to offend anyone with the following discussion. I'm trying to keep clear that I'm talking about fictional rape - which like fictional murder, can mean many things - and not real rape.

I remember coming up to SR (not that long ago for me), having caught various rumours of what was going on, and wondering if I dared watch it. I had the clear impression that Buffy was raped. It sounded awful. Gradually it became clear (I wasn't looking for spoilers, but just failing to duck them sometimes) that it was an attack, possibly an attempted rape, rather than a rape. So I switched off my alarm bells and just watched the ep when it aired. I have to say, perhaps because of my expectations of a devastatingly upsetting event, I thought it was not nearly as bad as feared. The most upsetting thing about it was seeing Buffy temporarily abandon her vulnerable but fundamentally tough persona to go all weak and wimbly like any stereotype tv bimbo. And of course it signalled the final end to any fantasy that the Spuffy (Buffike?) might work out. While no fanatical shipper, like others I had somehow hoped it would, after all that S5 buildup (good point by Miss Edith btw in prev post).

Was my lack of being devastated because I'm fairly old, and have grown a thick skin over the years, I wonder? I find myself looking back to another TV rape, Soames Forsyth's rape of Irene in the original 70's BBC version of The Forsyth Saga, shown when I was in my late teens. In some ways similar to SR, in some ways different. As emotive? possibly. It's stayed with me all these years. I imagine it was quite controversial at the time, when British television was still a pretty straight-laced affair, but I've got no memories of any debates. I've got a vivid memory of the episode, though.

The Forsyth rape was a key point in the historical series, a dramatised version of Galsworthy's book, which took the Forsyths from early Victorian times to the mid 20c. Soames was a buttoned-down late Victorian, carrying increasingly outdated views, particularly about the dominance of men over women, into the new century. He desired and married the younger, free-spirited Irene, only for them both to discover that she was not attracted to him and that she had no intention of lying back and thinking of England. The tension between his traditional belief that she was now, as his wife, obliged to 'love honour and obey', and her refusal to subjugate her independant spirit to his needs (paradoxically one of the qualities he loved her for) built until Soames' inner conflicts tipped him into violence, and he tried 'asserting his rights'.

The way the scene was handled wasn't that different to SR. Nothing Xrated shown, but a great deal of tension, and the sense that at the end of it both the actors and the audience were shaking slightly.

After that point in The Forsyth Saga, we start moving away from stifling Victorian England, and towards the Twenties, with flappers, jazz and change in the air, particularly regarding marriage, sex and the roles of women and men in society. Irene leaves Soames the next day, and finds happiness with an artsy crafty architect, a freethinker who is capable of adapting to new ideas. Like Spike, Soames knows he's crossed a line, done irreparable damage, but doesn't quite know why. He feels like he should be the wronged one, but it's obvious even to him that he isn't. At this point in the story, as well, Soames' story ceases to be the main thread. We leave him fading into the shadows of the past, and follow Irene and her daughter into the future, the new age.

Even though the attack in SR isn't a rape (and isn't even a very serious attack, looked at objectively, and in the light of other depicted violence on the show), it is experienced by the audience as a rape, and the reactions to it are on that basis. I think it's partly because the event is playing the dramatic role of a rape - there's a rape-shaped gap in the episode, despite the attack not quite fitting it. The dramatic role is that of an irreversible change, an irrevocable making of choices despite the best efforts of the protagonists to postpone them. It's a considerable dramatic statement. Both Soames and Spike 'lose it', and in attempting to re-assert control by violence, lose it completely and forever. In the case of TFS it's a narrative about change - the control that Soames is losing is to do with one set of cultural norms giving way to another. In the case of SR it's more about individual change. Spike is losing control in the sense that he is personally evolving, he doesn't know who he is any more. He's been attempting to go back, to reclaim who he was with Drusilla via a darkened Buffy, but it's not working. In both cases the act of violence destroys an equivocal relationship, an uneasy stasis, and allows the narrative to move on into a new space.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Amen! -- Rob, 16:43:37 07/18/03 Fri

[> [> Re: Re-examining S6, Willow as the villain? What went right? What went wrong? -- heywhynot, 10:56:44 07/17/03 Thu

"1. How did Willow end up becoming the villain of S6?

Was it a natural progression? Or out of the blue?
What if any comment does this make on control, dominance and misogyny? And why this season as opposed to S5 or S4 or even s3? And how does it parallel B/S?"

Willow ended up being the villian in my view because she still held the view of herself as the nerd from high school, who was unimportant. She hadn't grown-up and cast aside the role tossed upon her as a child. In many respects the Trio had the same problem. Being with Tara had allowed Willow to escape the view of herself as a nerd but instead of taking this chance to reevaluate herself she saw herself through Tara's eyes. When Tara was killed, Willow returned to viewing herself as the nerd. The difference being from high school was that Willow had developed great skills, abilities, power. Being a child once more, Willow sought to wield power to do things the easy way to fix her life (which has been seen as part of Willow's character from the begining, she reacts emotionally, not thinking of the consequences of her actions). She is in pain and wants it to stop because she doesn't believe she can handle the pain.

So yes I do believe it was a natural progression of Willow's character. When things outside of her control happen that hurt her she reacts seeking to dominate, take control.

Misogny does not just mean hatred of women it can also mean distrust of women. Willow clearly distrusts herself to be able to deal with Tara's death. She doesn't believe she is strong enough, she lashes out at Warren, then the world as a whole because she wants the pain to end. Since Something Blue, I was expecting this from Willow. Restless only confirmed my opinion that Willow saw herself still as a kid, the nerd. Willow still believed herself to be the nerd from high school who Coredilia/Harmony picked on. Why then did Willow not go all "Dark Willow" back in seasons 4 and 5? First she did not have the access to the same amount of power. Second and I think more importantly, she had people around her to keep her from falling into the trap of seeing herself as a child/nerd.

Season 6 Buffy has withdrawn from the world and it is because of Willow's actions. Xander is lost fighting his own demons, his fear of becoming his dad. Tara dies and the pain is too much. Her supports are gone, Buffy, Xander and Tara. No one is able to force Willow to be true to herself, to escape the delusion. She is a child once more in pain and just wants it to stop & she has the power to do it. Luckily Xander rises to the occasion and forces Willow to see herself fully.

How does it parallel B/S? I have no idea. No one is really there for Buffy nor Spike to get them to wake up and see the immature relationship they are having. When Spike is in pain because Buffy doesn't want him, he reacts like Willow did to the pain, trying to wield power (AR). Buffy forces him to see himself fully and what he is doing, shaking him to the point that he wants to change. Though I still don't think that Spike really wanted a soul at the end of Season 6 he wanted to be Spike without the chip but instead got a soul, but that maybe my own views on Spike placing themselves onto the story.

Ok enough rambling, think about the other questions and hopefully come up with more concise answers.
[> [> [> Re: Re-examining S6, Willow as the villain? What went right? What went wrong? -- Pathfinder, 06:14:10 07/20/03 Sun

Sorry, I'm probably jumping into this thread way late, but you made some great points about the Willow character arc. I just had one comment.

Season 6 Buffy has withdrawn from the world and it is because of Willow's actions.

But on a larger scale, hadn't Buffy been withdrawing from the world ever since her mom's death? While her leap from that tower at the end of season 5 was on one level a grand act of self-sacrifice, it was also a way out for Buffy, who couldn't quite bring herself to be a part of the world anymore. She said it herself in her last words to Dawn :"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it."

It was undoubtedly a heroic act, but there was also an aspect of immaturity to it - I'll slay the dragon and make the grand sacrifice and I don't have to be here tomorrow to pick up the pieces.

As ill-advised (and, of course, entirely necessary in order for the show to continue) as Willow's actions in bringing Buffy back were, they also forced Buffy to deal with her deep depression, and to work through the pain day by day as a person.

And of course, ultimately it's Willow who removes the great burden from Buffy's shoulders at the end of the series by helping her share her power with all the Potentials around the world.

Sorry if this has all been rehashed a few hundred times already.
[> [> [> [> Re: Re-examining S6, Willow as the villain? What went right? What went wrong? -- dmw, 12:14:09 07/21/03 Mon

But on a larger scale, hadn't Buffy been withdrawing from the world ever since her mom's death? While her leap from that tower at the end of season 5 was on one level a grand act of self-sacrifice, it was also a way out for Buffy, who couldn't quite bring herself to be a part of the world anymore. She said it herself in her last words to Dawn :"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it."

Yes, Buffy had been withdrawing and there was a strong sense, especially after WOTW, that she was giving up her life because she wouldn't bear to live it, not because it was the only way to save the world. All the seeds are there without the idea of Heaven to have Buffy depressed and experiencing difficulties accepting her role in life after her resurrection.

As ill-advised (and, of course, entirely necessary in order for the show to continue) as Willow's actions in bringing Buffy back were

I think the biker gang in Bargaining was meant to show that the world needed Buffy and Willow's power levels are so erratic that I'm willing to accept she couldn't stop them herself, so I can't blame Willow and the other three for anything other than not digging Buffy's body up and that's something I can't suspend my disbelief over anyway. I just accept it as a dramatic necessity for how they wanted to show Buffy clawing herself out of the womb of the earth.
[> Recent Interview -- don't read if in serious, or angry mood -- Deb, 23:41:22 07/16/03 Wed

Just in the past two weeks, but since I read my magazine at the the store, I don't remember which one.

James Marsters flat out admitted they made a mistake and took it too far. Whether we agree or not, it's something that is going to be hotly debated as long as anyone is still debating Buffy Fonzie jumped the shark. WEll, the land shark got jumped and bitten back here. They made a mistake. One thing that they could have had happen was Spike threatening to dust himself if Buffy didn't admit she loved him. That would ALSO be a realistic "crisis" within an abusive relationship, and if anyone thinks that it has no effect or affect on the partner who is being blackmailed, your are so wrong. It is terrifying.

Problem is, once dusted, completely dead....send the Bustduster to Africa and order up a new body along with the soul(s) (I just knew there was something more significant than an allusion to "The Mummy" when those bettles.........yuck. This from one who just this week, while getting money from an ATM, threw the money into the air because a Daddy Long Legs was crawling on the top bill and making a run for her arm.) OR

Buffy stands her ground, and Spike has to back down on his ultimatum, thus, like a dog, Spike would have to roll on his back and expose his neck to Buffy, declaring her Alpha. She won. It's over. It's really, really over. Well, in traditional courtly foolhardiness, Spike then could go get souled and Buffy could still have feelings and still be able to leave Dawn with him. Damn, she could order him to protect Dawn.

Or, Spike could have dusted himself. That would have been a shocker, but his prior suicidal behavior would support it. Buffy freaks. Dawn freaks. No body else gives a damn. Spike is resurrected in season seven, but the problem is he didn't redeem himself when he dusted himself. He just became an ultimate manipulator. But he was an EVIIIL asshole anyway when he went for his souls, so what's the difference? Seeing Red becomes seeing dead: "get chipped, get shagged, get slapped, get beaten to a pulp, repeat last three steps until coming to a full boil, confront, have pointy end of stake pointed backwards, oops! dust in the wind, summer break, dust buster arrives in Africa. . . .

What if Xander had arrived a few minutes earlier and just walks right on in on Buffy in the bathroom (that bothered me too. Geez, might as well put a Public Restroom sign on the door.) and he defends Buffy by dusting Spike?
[> misogyny hatred and/or distrust -- heywhynot, 11:02:44 07/17/03 Thu

If I am not mistaken, misogyny can also mean distrust of women. Here I can see that. Given his issues with his mother, I can view that Spike on some level might be a misogynist. Season 6 I don't think Spike harbors strong distrust of Buffy. Season 7 he overcomes it and trusts her. He believes she will save him from the First.
[> [> According to the dictionary, you are mistaken -- Sophist, 12:29:17 07/17/03 Thu

The dictionary defines misogyny as "hatred of women". I could see distrust as being a consequence of misogyny, but not, in and of itself, an element of it.
[> [> [> Re: According to the dictionary, you are mistaken(Which dictionary?) -- heywhynot, 13:03:17 07/17/03 Thu

The ragged old dictionary in my lab (not sure what year nor what dictionary it is, since the first few pages, front & back, are no longer with us) defines it as hatred and or distrust of women. Hatred appears to be the most common definition. Always thought of it as a hatred of women myself meaning hating the idea females as equals of males (ie hating Lilith while adoring Eve) and that misogynists view women as objects, beneath men, not worthy of their respect/trust.
[> [> [> [> Three different versions of Webster's. -- Sophist, 13:53:24 07/17/03 Thu

Two books and an online version. Maybe not enough variety in source, though the date range is significant enough that I'd expect more nuance if they felt there was any.

Always thought of it as a hatred of women myself meaning hating the idea females as equals of males (ie hating Lilith while adoring Eve)

This is quite a bit broader than my sense. I don't think misogynists accept women even as inferiors; they just hate them. I'd be inclined to use the broader term "sexist" to cover what you suggest.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Three different versions of Webster's. -- heywhynot, 14:38:49 07/17/03 Thu

A sexist doesn't have to hate the idea of women being equals with men, they don't believe females are equals of males. Sexists believe in the superiority of their sex. Misogynist hate women not females. They hate the gender (a layering of humanity) not the sex (the body). Many misogynists are more than happy to have sex with females (the body) but they hate the woman (the humanity). They hate the adding of humanity (in all human societies to date known as gender) to the sex. Females are objects in their mind and any addition to that is to be hated. Are all sexists misogynists? No but are all misogynists sexists? Yes.

Of course the ideas of binary gender and sex break down upon examination of biology and psychology like most assignements of groups/other onto human beings. Thinking back to a history class where a history professor was talking about sex and gender. Saying gender was just a social construct (men/women) whereas they are just males and females. To which I then asked him how he would define sex and he looked at me with a curious look. Then I pointed out why men have breasts with nipples, XX people who have male genitals, XYs which can't process male hormones, hermaphroditism, etc. which left him very confused on the matter. Life is not as simple or as ordered as us mere humans wish it to be.
[> [> [> [> [> American Hertiage Dictionary 3rd Edition agrees (def: sexism, misogyny, patriarchy) -- s'kat, 15:05:01 07/17/03 Thu

Here's the word broken down:

Mis - 1. Bad;badly;wrong;wrongly
2. Failure; lack

gune (gyne) - women

Misogyny: n. Hatred of women [From the Greek - misein - means to hate + gune, woman] misogynist is the noun meaning person who hates women.

So in order to be a "misogynist" - you must hate
women. I've met sexists, misogynists, chavinists, racists, bigots in my life. I'd be very careful how broadly we define this.

A misogynist is someone who can't stand women. Misogyny
is just hatred of women.

Sexism is discrimination based on gender.

Patriarchy: a social system in which the father is the head of the family and descent is traced through the paternal line.

chauvinism: 1. Fanatical patriotism 2. Prejudiced belief in the superiority of one's own group [Fr. after Nicolas Chauvin - legendary French solider]

So you see word choice does matter. ;-)
[> [> [> [> [> [> So does the OED. -- Sophist, 17:46:36 07/17/03 Thu

[> [> [> [> [> [> Misogyny is not black and white, but subject to shades of gray -- Dariel, 17:59:37 07/17/03 Thu

As has been discussed many times on this board, humans are complex beings, and can contain within them many different, and even opposite impulses. I think many men in our society harbor some misogynistic feelings, which can be aroused by certain situations. Our culture (speaking of Western culture) has not suddenly jettisoned it's negative views of women, as they go very deep. Which is, I think, what Joss was referring to when he used the term "deep misogyny." It was in Spike, it's in a lot of men (and women), because it's so deeply rooted in our culture. Every time someone calls Buffy or (any other woman) a "bitch" they are exhibiting misogynistic views, often without realizing it. She's not acting like a real woman, a good woman; she's being a bitch.

I don't think that misogyny is about hatred of the woman as "other" in the way that racism is towards blacks; it is about hating women for the power that they have. Misogynists feel the need to control and dominate women because of their own vulnerability and immaturity--they don't really know how to have an adult relationship with a woman. Women make them feel needy, which they hate, so they hate women for "making" them feel this way. Many men harbor misogynist views on some level and in varying degrees; because they have learned it from our culture and because their relationship to women confuses and confounds them.

The idea of Spike as a misogynist doesn't bother me because it's not a black and white thing. Spike was capable of very strong feelings of love towards the women in his life. He was willing to do almost anything for them. However, these women--Cecily, Anne, Dru, and Buffy--did not return his affection in the same degree. They were all somewhat unattainable, and Spike felt controlled by his feelings for them. It's not surprising that he would also hate them on some level.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> I don't think you're using the common definition of the term -- Sophist, 20:06:44 07/17/03 Thu

Which is ok up to a point. But the common usage as expressed in the various dictionaries doesn't fit very well with your suggestion.

Think of it this way: the OED gives examples of other words using "miso-" as a prefix. Most of these are nonce words (OED's use, not mine, but Random'll love it) like misogallic (hatred of the French; a timely word indeed). If we substitute "misogallic" into your post for "misogyny" and "French" for "women", I doubt anyone would agree.

Every time someone calls Buffy or (any other woman) a "bitch" they are exhibiting misogynistic views

I don't agree. If I call a man some equivalent term, I'm not expressing misanthropy, i.e., hatred of men in general, I just don't like that particular man. Some people who use the term "bitch" are misogynistic (Caleb), but not everyone is. The use of one term alone is not nearly enough for us to make that identification.

I don't think that misogyny is about hatred of the woman as "other" in the way that racism is towards blacks

I'd say that "racism" covers a spectrum of opinion from disdain to hatred. The equivalent term for women is "sexism". "Misogyny" is limited to hatred (at least in the dictionaries and to my understanding).

Many men harbor misogynist views on some level and in varying degrees; because they have learned it from our culture and because their relationship to women confuses and confounds them

In the broadest sense, no one can learn anything except from their culture. I doubt that explains misogyny; I'm quite sure it's much more widespread than that (unless you have a very broad definition of "our" culture).

I doubt that misogyny is "learned" in any meaningful sense of the term. Most deep emotions like hatred are pre-rational. We know far too little of the human psyche for me to have any confidence in the exact source of such emotions.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I don't think you're using the common definition of the term -- Dariel, 08:32:30 07/18/03 Fri

Which is ok up to a point. But the common usage as expressed in the various dictionaries doesn't fit very well with your suggestion.

Think of it this way: the OED gives examples of other words using "miso-" as a prefix. Most of these are nonce words (OED's use, not mine, but Random'll love it) like misogallic (hatred of the French; a timely word indeed). If we substitute "misogallic" into your post for "misogyny" and "French" for "women", I doubt anyone would agree.

The use of the same prefix does not make make the two concepts equivalent. The French are a nation; women are a sex.

"Every time someone calls Buffy or (any other woman) a "bitch" they are exhibiting misogynistic views."

I don't agree. If I call a man some equivalent term, I'm not expressing misanthropy, i.e., hatred of men in general, I just don't like that particular man. Some people who use the term "bitch" are misogynistic (Caleb), but not everyone is. The use of one term alone is not nearly enough for us to make that identification.

I shouldn't really have used the word "views." But the essence of the word is misogynistic. A "bitch" is, after all, a female dog. It is a gender-specific term. There is no male equivalent.

"I don't think that misogyny is about hatred of the woman as "other" in the way that racism is towards blacks."

I'd say that "racism" covers a spectrum of opinion from disdain to hatred. The equivalent term for women is "sexism". "Misogyny" is limited to hatred (at least in the dictionaries and to my understanding).

Again, disdain or hatred for a race is not equivalent to disdain or hatred of women. Most misogynists are raised by a woman, many have sisters, aunts, etc.; their relationship to women is more intimate than that of the racist towards the object of their racism. There's a very personal element to misogyny. To illustrate, here's a quote from a website named "Misogyny Unlimited"(!):

"'The Disciple asked: What is a misogynist?'
The Master replied: 'I do not know; but it is used by cowards as a term of abuse for those who say what everybody thinks. Cowards are the men who cannot approach a woman without going out of their minds and becoming treacherous. They buy the woman's favour by serving their friends' heads on a silver platter; and they absorb so much femininity that they see with her eyes and feel with her feelings. Agreed: there are things you do not mention in everyday conversation, and you do not tell your woman what is the essence of her gender.'"

That last sentence illustrates also a point I've tried to make--that misogyny is not some sort of pure form of hatred that one has or does not have. The speaker obviously expects men to "have" a woman, not to boycott them a la Caleb.

"Many men harbor misogynist views on some level and in varying degrees; because they have learned it from our culture and because their relationship to women confuses and confounds them."

In the broadest sense, no one can learn anything except from their culture. I doubt that explains misogyny; I'm quite sure it's much more widespread than that (unless you have a very broad definition of "our" culture).

I doubt that misogyny is "learned" in any meaningful sense of the term. Most deep emotions like hatred are pre-rational. We know far too little of the human psyche for me to have any confidence in the exact source of such emotions.

No, you're righ