After I linked to my post on The Little Mermaid on my Facebook page, I had a back-and-forth with my buddy Captain Blastin (who also writes many thoughtful pieces at Informed Instigation, this being one of my favorite). He mentioned that he always loved Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid, even though he knew Sebastian was a “happy island person” stereotype. In the midst of this conversation, we challenged each other to come up with three characters that we knew were problematic in some way or another, but still loved.
Here’s the tricky part: we couldn’t pick characters that were intentionally problematic. No Pierce Hawthornes, Archie Bunkers, Eric Cartmans, or Michael Scotts. Those characters make racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist jokes all of the time, but the joke is on them and how ridiculous they are.
I thought about this issue for awhile, and eventually came up with this list of three.
1. Sky Masterson, Guys and Dolls
Really, almost any character in Guys and Dolls can be on this list, but Sky Masterson is the worst. He’s a cad who uses women. For kicks and money, he makes a bet with Nathan Detroit that he can charm a woman to come to Havana with him. He picks Sarah Brown as this woman to charm, because she’s religious, and will get more kicks and giggles by charming a religious woman. While they’re in Havana, he gets her drunk, not letting her know how much alcohol is in those drinks. It’s all kind of problematic and date-rapey.
So why don’t I hate him?
Apparently, I am willing to forgive a lot of Marlon Brando in a fedora:
I watched the movie with a friend lately and she made a similar comment: “He’s getting her drunk. Why don’t I have a problem with this?!” Plus, we all know how I feel about the “good woman redeems a cad” story. And yet, I can’t hate Sky. He’s Marlon Brando in a fedora.
2. Pocahontas, Pocahontas
Holy historical inaccuracies, Batman! How many facts can this movie get wrong? I’m not sure what’s most offensive about this Disney version of the story – the sentimental portrayal of the Native Americans, the implication that “both sides are just as bad” when the Brits are the one invading the home of Pocahontas and her family, or the fact that the animators made this twelve-year-old into an eighteen-year-old, large-breasted Barbie doll.
They also turned the story of Pocahontas and John Smith into a love story, because GOD FORBID a real-life historical heroine have something other than romantic love inspire her to action.
So why don’t I hate her?
Two words: THAT VOICE.
Sure, her body is anatomically impossible. Sure, she’s Native American, and therefore so magical and in tune with nature that she can pick up a bear cub without the mother mauling her to death. But her voice is pretty. So, so pretty. And I just want to listen to this song and “Just Around the Riverbend” over and over and over.
3. Xander Harris, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I hesitated putting this character on the list because, unlike in the cases of Sky Masterson and Pocahontas, I think Xander’s flaws are intentionally problematic and we’re not actually supposed to agree with him when he’s being an ass. But there is one Xander-centric episode of BtVS that should ping all of my feminist and consent issues buttons and still, somehow, doesn’t: “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.”
In this episode, Xander buys Cordelia a pretty necklace for a Valentine’s Day present. She breaks up with him right afterward because she’s under pressure from her popular friends. Humiliated and angry, Xander blackmails Amy (a witch) into putting a love spell on Cordelia: he wants her to fall madly in love with him so he can then break up with her. Amy casts the spell, but it backfires, and every woman in Sunnydale except Cordelia falls in possessive love with Xander – including Buffy, who tries to seduce him.
So far, the episode isn’t so problematic. Xander did a bad thing, but the show recognizes it as a bad thing, even though the effects of the spell are played for comic effect. He turns down Willow and Buffy when they throw themselves at him because he knows it would be wrong to take advantage of them. By the end of the episode, Giles manages to break the spell, and Cordelia is so touched that Xander meant the spell to be for her that she gets back together with him.
*record scratches*
Wait, what? Cordelia is flattered by the idea that Xander “invoked the great roofie spirit” (as Buffy put it) to use on her? She never gets to find out that Xander used the spell as part of a plan to humiliate her? She never finds out that Xander was immediately eager to switch his attention back to Buffy once she showed interest in him (before he realized Buffy was affected by the spell)? This is an outrage! I should hate his stupid guts!
So why do I love him?
Because of that cute goofy grin he gets on his face when Cordelia tells off her friends. Because when Giles tells him, “I can’t believe you were fool enough to do something like this!” he says, “Oh no, I’m twice the fool it takes to do something like this.” Because he told Cordelia that “maybe something special in you sees something special in me, and vice versa,” and he’s so sweetly sincere and nervous about it and I just want to pinch his cheeks.
Someday, I’m going to write a long post about why Xander fascinates me from a feminist viewpoint, and why he is and always will be my favorite on Buffy the Vampire Slayer no matter how many dumb things he does, but now is not the time for that. Right now, I’m just acknowledging that the narrative of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” not only lets him get away with his behavior, but rewards him for his behavior, and I can’t even get mad about it because I love him and Cordelia, separately and together, and their walking off into the sunset as they promise to keep arguing in public makes me swoon every damn time I watch the episode.
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I also love Xander, and I think that part of his appeal is that he is a teenage boy that, over the course of the show, actually matures into a man. I mean, he’s in high school, and he’s trying to do the right thing, and not always succeeding, and that’s what makes a character interesting, right? Flaws! Then after high school we see how he flounders before finally finding his place in the world, but he is still able to learn and grow with time.
Having a show full of consistently perfect feminist characters could be interesting, but it would also probably limit discussion of gender roles within the show. Having Xander as the only young male character that sticks in the main cast for the whole run of the show means we get to have quite a few of those discussions, but more importantly, have actual progress. We don’t have the same lesson over and over because the character remembers and learns and grows, and that’s part of Xander’s attraction, that we actually SEE this progress. His struggle to become a mature (feminist) adult and his flaws and backsliding along the way is real, human, and interesting. This prevents him from becoming a cardboard cutout character used as a blunt instrument of moral lessons.
Plus, I also like that Xander is used to explore classism issues, especially after high school when he is the townie to the others’ college student status. Although I disagree that beer is bad, for the record.
Everything you said here is the crux of my future, eventual “I love Xander” post, and I intend to go into much further detail whenever I write it. But a resounding “yes” to all of this. I think he grows and matures in really interesting ways.
And no, beer isn’t bad. But that episode gave us, “Well excuse me, Mr. I Spent the Sixties in an electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove!”
This is funny timing….two months ago my good friend and I (both big Buffy fans) marathoned the first three seasons and, because of seeing it all at once, realized just how often Xander bothered us. We were talking over the bad things he did, and how much worst he was than the other regulars (other than the loathed Riley, of course, hee) and then we came to an uncomfortable realization. Willow Rosenberg, when it comes to her behavior towards Xander, is totally a Nice Guy ™. She persists in being his friend even though she wants much more, but she never says a word to him about what she wants but is hurt when he doesn’t just figure it out, and feels betrayed when he dated someone else even though she’s been so nice to him and “the other guy is just a jerk” (Cordelia, then Faith). Of course, my friend and I love Willow just as the show wants us to, and so her problematic behavior that should really grate on us is negligible. So I guess she’s my pick.
You wrote: “Sure, [Pocahontas]’s Native American, and therefore so magical and in tune with nature that she can pick up a bear cub without the mother mauling her to death.” that made me LOL like you won’t believe. 😉
Grrr. Riley. Riley. He just might be my most hated character in BtVS history. I mean, besides Dawn pre-season 7. And Wood. And Kennedy. And Tara. Wow, that list is long.
And thank you for pointing this out re: Willow. Most people who accuse Xander of being a Nice Guy when it comes to Buffy completely ignore that Willow is a total Nice Girl when it comes to Xander.
I’ve tried to figure out why Willow’s Nice Girl behavior bothers me so more than Xander’s Nice Guy behavior, and I’ve come up with three different theories:
1) Willow seemed to have no problem with Cordelia integrating into the Scooby gang, becoming their (sort of) friend, and being part of the action. It’s only when Cordelia has the audacity to date Xander that Willow flips her shit and suddenly remembers that she hates Cordelia and created the We Hate Cordelia Club. Xander, on the other hand, I believe would have mistrusted Angel even if Angel hadn’t dated Buffy, because Angel was a vampire who had killed legions of people. In fact, I thought Angel was a big jerk to Buffy even before he lost his soul. So even though I think Xander was completely wrong in the way he treated Buffy, I agreed with his ultimate opinion that Angel sucks.
2) Xander never got to be with the object of his Nice Guy affections. He had to get over Buffy without ever being with her, without her showing the slightest interest in ever reciprocating his feelings. But Willow got to have her cake and eat it too. She got to kiss Xander, fulfill a fantasy she’d had since she was a child, and then get Oz back anyway. (All for a stupid contrived plot that was written just to sideline Cordelia and Xander for the rest of the season and make Cordelia’s transition to Angel easier and GRR don’t even get me started on that fucking clothes fluke!)
3) And now I’m going to drop all pretense of objectivity and just admit that I like Xander more and therefore am willing to forgive so many more of his actions, even when he’s being a big jerk.
I think part of Xander’s appeal might be that in the series he fulfills the trope commonly called ‘the chick’ (from TV Tropes’ Five Man Band megatrope). That is to say, Xander’s role parallels that of the lone female character in a lot of other shows, making him something of a subversion (just as Buffy herself is). Especially in the early seasons, most of Xander’s plots revolve around his attempts to find relationships and his unrequited love for the lead or around his basic helplessness compared to the rest of the cast. He’s the heart of the team in many ways (something made pretty explicit in the seventh season with the ‘I see’ conversation with Dawn). Xander makes far more stupid mistakes than any other cast member, especially in areas that might be seen as more stereotypically female (love spells, the musical demon summoning, etc). While it does bother me that Xander often gets away with being a pig (though there’s usually some humorous consequence, I can’t think of a time he’s undergone the level of suffering that Willow or Buffy do as a result of their mistakes), I could see it as an argument that his actions are less meaningful than his female friends.
I find this comment fascinating (in a good way).
You’re right that Xander fulfills a lot of the “lone female character” tropes. His stories are more relationship-focused than Willow’s or even Buffy’s – for all the time that the show spent on Buffy’s romances with Angel, Riley, and Spike, I still felt that the core journey for her character was always about her identity as the Slayer, and the guys were secondary to that. But I did think Xander’s primary stories were mostly told through the lens of his romances, and in that way, he’s very much “the girl” of the trope.
And like I said, I find that fascinating, because I’ve always wanted to see a “female Xander” or a “female Ron Weasley” in a fantasy story. Yes, we see supposedly “helpless” women in stories all of the time, and Xander/Ron are not as powerful as Buffy/Harry or Willow/Hermione. But I feel like I rarely, if ever, see the female character as the funny one in the story – the one who’s supposedly the comic relief, but really a core member of a friendship and the snarky heart of the group.
That’s an excellent point. I’m trying to think of an example that could fit. Maybe one of the Discworld characters (though being ‘the funny one’ in a Discworld novel would be impossible) like Angua but she’s clearly much more powerful than most of her fellow members of the Watch and just chooses to be the more down to earth one. Sokka (from Avatar: The Last Airbender) fits the Xander/Ron Weasley niche but he’s of course a guy. I can’t think of a female character who is treated as both comic relief and the heart of the group. It seems like female characters can either be snarky but highly competent (Toph from Avatar, Hermione to some extent) or goofy and mostly ineffectual (all sorts of anime and ‘requisite female’ characters). It seems like the preference is for a character to be competent and snarky but not as competent/powerful as the lead.
“Buffy, I’ve gone through some fairly dark times in my life, faced some scary things, among them the kitchen at ‘The Fabulous Ladies Night Club.’ Let me tell you something, when it’s dark and I’m all alone and I’m scared or freaked out or whatever, I always think, ‘What would Buffy do?’ You’re my hero. Ok, sometimes when it’s dark and I’m all alone I think, ‘What is Buffy wearing?” Xander in the Freshman.
That quote pretty much makes me forgive Xander for everything.
“The Freshman” is an episode that bores me for the most part, but when Xander shows up, everything is better. That is one of my very favorite scenes of his.
Although, right now, one of my favorite quotes: “And on the day the words ‘flimsy excuse’ were redefined, we all sat in awe, and watched.”
I always thought the movie was /clearly/ a lot more sympathetic to the Indians than to the English. Powhatan’s hostility to the English was portrayed as understandable. The English were being bigoted. I mean, the main villain was English, not Indian.
I’d agree if not for the song “Savages,” where Powhatan and the other Indians get lyrics like “They’re different from us, which means they can’t be trusted,” almost word-for-word similar to what the English sang about the Indians. It’s also a little convenient how the governor was the ONLY English person who was really “bad” while the rest were won over by one father-daughter speech.
So yes, I do think the movie is a lot more sympathetic to the Indians, but also goes out of its way to show that most of the English aren’t REALLY that bad, we promise! That’s the aspect of the movie that makes me uncomfortable.