On endings and fannish responses
Mar. 14th, 2011 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakStill on an emotional high from the Being Human finale, and the entire third season, which grew a beard so long it can call itself Barbarossa. *obscure German legend is obscure but was good enough for Heinrich Heine, so it's good enough for me* Meaning: rarely did I see such a satisfying and right conclusion to an arc that looked at its characters unflinchingly.
Not unrelatedly, this put me in mind of previous examples of morally ambiguous characters, how their respective canons dealt with them and how fandom responded. Also of my own reactions. I like to think this wasn't/isn't always about how much I like the character in question. I mean, Londo Mollari is my favourite tv character of all time, I love him with the passion of a thousand burning suns and all other corny clichés, and yet one of several reasons why I insist the fifth season of Babylon 5 was a must is that had the show ended with season 4 (plus Sleeping in Light), the way we'd have left Londo in s4 (i.e. happy) would have felt wrong and like a cop-out compared with what had gone on before, and the choices Londo had made. On the other hand, if Battlestar Galactica's Gaius Baltar would have gotten an heroic death for the cause type of ending to atone for his own wrongs, that would have felt like an easy cop-out, too, because of Baltar's own arc and nature. (As it is, the ending he did get felt perfect, simultanously both the best and the worst thing that could have happened from Baltar's own pov. And I like Gaius very much indeed as well (though not as much as I love Londo, but he is one of my BSG favourites).
Now, neither Londo nor Gaius Baltar were - for the majority of their fandoms at least - the woobies. And all too often, that's what the morally grey and darker grey to black crowd ends up as, with the result that the ambiguity which made them interesting originally gets airbrushed away and excused, sometimes by the fandom, sometimes by canon, sometimes by both. And woe to the characters who do not embrace those woobies and instead dare to hold them accountable to their actions. Especially when they're female. The comments I've seen during the last three or four weeks first re: Nina and then re: Annie in Being Human were but the latest example; nothing new, really (though it still disturbs me to read them), when I think back to my first online fandom, which was Highlander. The other day I came across some interesting meta regarding Methos and the question of forgiveness (on the audience's part) (and I'm not just calling it interesting because the author recommended Death and the Maiden in it, my old Cassandra (and Methos) story which I still regard as one of my writing breakthroughs in and out of fandom). It is a highly subjective question, which characters a viewer forgives (or maybe not forgives but never stops embracing?), and which overplay their hand in this regard.
In the case of Methos, I'd say about 99% of all Highlander watchers responded to the entire Horsemen arc by not just continuing to embrace but love even more fervently (and hating both female guest star and to a degree male main character for having different responses). The conditions for this are pretty much ideal - Methos was introduced as a witty, very attractive trickster type of guest character; he only shows up rarely which means he never has the chance to get "bad" episodes for the viewers to get used to him; at the time when the darkest chapter of his past is revealed, he's already saved the main character once or twice and gotten a touching girl of the week romance. (I've seen a lot of fans wistfully wish for the Methos show, but I never did, despite loving the character back then, because being elusive and unpredictable was part of his charm, which would have been lost had be become a regular series hero.) BUT, and that's probably a real reason why all those years and many a fannish experience later I still like Methos, I never felt the show itself downplayed the enormity of what he did. Or expected us to condemm Cassandra for not forgiving Methos, never mind what fandom did; HL the show could have done better by Cassandra in that they could have allowed her to demonstrate more competence with a sword (the woman is 3000 years old, for God's sake), and cut the Melvin Koren flashback down to two minutes instead, but one thing the show never did was presenting her as wrong to hate her rapist/torturer/brainwasher/all-around-bastard from the Bronze Age. And as opposed to a lot of fanfic which had her going insane so that Methos and/or Duncan could feel justified in killing her, the show let her walk away alive and unbowed. If the show had gone like so many, many fan-written stories featuring Cassandra did back then (and still do for all I know), I would have lost whatever fondness I had for Methos by now and would have wistfully looked for fanfic decapitating him instead.
Which brings me full circle with Being Human. I don't I could have continued watching - and there will be a fourth season, yay! - if Nina had died, Annie had been presented as either misguided in her pursuit of justice or coming around to putting her love for Mitchell above all else, or Lia had gotten the Kemp treatment (i.e. had been written as an antagonist so vile and insane that the original wrong against said antagonist is presented as dwarved by said antagonist's revenge). And I would have felt severely let down and would have struggled watching, despite the excellence of this season, if Mitchell had survived. Because not only had the entire narrative demonstrated, again and again, that Mitchell could not be trusted to stay on the wagon, that he got a kick specifically out of killing, not the blood (as early as early s1, dear viewers, because those vampire snuff movies that served as porn to him showed people dying), that he was emotionally damaging to those around him, but there was simply no where else to go with the character. Another "Mitchell tries to good again and he really means it... this time" tale? Please, no.
Checking out comments of people who object to the finale on grounds other than "but Aidan is hot!" and/or "but what about my 'ship?", I've seen the complaint that Mitchell's suicide-by-George negates the message of the show and implies it's no use to struggle and try being human because you're found to fail anyway. Which is not what I got from it at all. Mitchell was unable to live as a human (well, as a human who isn't a serial killer), or live by human ethics, but that was him as an individual, and in the end, he came full circle to his beginning as a vampire/end as a human being: this time, he did die not only for the sake of his own friends but of this time for strangers, to wit, all those future victims that now won't be. He made a choice neither the soldier John Mitchell (who wanted to save his platoon but no more) nor the vampire he was for the most part of his unlife was able to, for all this "I want to be punished" claims, a choice that yes, there was some humanity in him beyond the need to survive. At the end of his arc, Mitchell was human (and, as opposed to his victims, died a death he wished surrounded by people who loved him).
Trying to be honest: would I feel different if Mitchell had been my favourite instead of my least favourite character on Being Human? Maybe. Maybe I would at least experience fannish woe in addition to a fannish high. But I hope I still would have considered his death earned both in the positive and the negative sense of the word, and the right storytelling choice. As it is, I will buy this season on dvd as soon as it's available - which I did for none of the previous seasons - will rewatch often, and will be glued on my tv screen once the fourth season starts. This despite the fact that the ending of this one actually would serve as a great show finale as well, but: I love the set-up we're left with. And I love the characters. As they are now, and with all the potential they have for stories yet to come.
Not unrelatedly, this put me in mind of previous examples of morally ambiguous characters, how their respective canons dealt with them and how fandom responded. Also of my own reactions. I like to think this wasn't/isn't always about how much I like the character in question. I mean, Londo Mollari is my favourite tv character of all time, I love him with the passion of a thousand burning suns and all other corny clichés, and yet one of several reasons why I insist the fifth season of Babylon 5 was a must is that had the show ended with season 4 (plus Sleeping in Light), the way we'd have left Londo in s4 (i.e. happy) would have felt wrong and like a cop-out compared with what had gone on before, and the choices Londo had made. On the other hand, if Battlestar Galactica's Gaius Baltar would have gotten an heroic death for the cause type of ending to atone for his own wrongs, that would have felt like an easy cop-out, too, because of Baltar's own arc and nature. (As it is, the ending he did get felt perfect, simultanously both the best and the worst thing that could have happened from Baltar's own pov. And I like Gaius very much indeed as well (though not as much as I love Londo, but he is one of my BSG favourites).
Now, neither Londo nor Gaius Baltar were - for the majority of their fandoms at least - the woobies. And all too often, that's what the morally grey and darker grey to black crowd ends up as, with the result that the ambiguity which made them interesting originally gets airbrushed away and excused, sometimes by the fandom, sometimes by canon, sometimes by both. And woe to the characters who do not embrace those woobies and instead dare to hold them accountable to their actions. Especially when they're female. The comments I've seen during the last three or four weeks first re: Nina and then re: Annie in Being Human were but the latest example; nothing new, really (though it still disturbs me to read them), when I think back to my first online fandom, which was Highlander. The other day I came across some interesting meta regarding Methos and the question of forgiveness (on the audience's part) (and I'm not just calling it interesting because the author recommended Death and the Maiden in it, my old Cassandra (and Methos) story which I still regard as one of my writing breakthroughs in and out of fandom). It is a highly subjective question, which characters a viewer forgives (or maybe not forgives but never stops embracing?), and which overplay their hand in this regard.
In the case of Methos, I'd say about 99% of all Highlander watchers responded to the entire Horsemen arc by not just continuing to embrace but love even more fervently (and hating both female guest star and to a degree male main character for having different responses). The conditions for this are pretty much ideal - Methos was introduced as a witty, very attractive trickster type of guest character; he only shows up rarely which means he never has the chance to get "bad" episodes for the viewers to get used to him; at the time when the darkest chapter of his past is revealed, he's already saved the main character once or twice and gotten a touching girl of the week romance. (I've seen a lot of fans wistfully wish for the Methos show, but I never did, despite loving the character back then, because being elusive and unpredictable was part of his charm, which would have been lost had be become a regular series hero.) BUT, and that's probably a real reason why all those years and many a fannish experience later I still like Methos, I never felt the show itself downplayed the enormity of what he did. Or expected us to condemm Cassandra for not forgiving Methos, never mind what fandom did; HL the show could have done better by Cassandra in that they could have allowed her to demonstrate more competence with a sword (the woman is 3000 years old, for God's sake), and cut the Melvin Koren flashback down to two minutes instead, but one thing the show never did was presenting her as wrong to hate her rapist/torturer/brainwasher/all-around-bastard from the Bronze Age. And as opposed to a lot of fanfic which had her going insane so that Methos and/or Duncan could feel justified in killing her, the show let her walk away alive and unbowed. If the show had gone like so many, many fan-written stories featuring Cassandra did back then (and still do for all I know), I would have lost whatever fondness I had for Methos by now and would have wistfully looked for fanfic decapitating him instead.
Which brings me full circle with Being Human. I don't I could have continued watching - and there will be a fourth season, yay! - if Nina had died, Annie had been presented as either misguided in her pursuit of justice or coming around to putting her love for Mitchell above all else, or Lia had gotten the Kemp treatment (i.e. had been written as an antagonist so vile and insane that the original wrong against said antagonist is presented as dwarved by said antagonist's revenge). And I would have felt severely let down and would have struggled watching, despite the excellence of this season, if Mitchell had survived. Because not only had the entire narrative demonstrated, again and again, that Mitchell could not be trusted to stay on the wagon, that he got a kick specifically out of killing, not the blood (as early as early s1, dear viewers, because those vampire snuff movies that served as porn to him showed people dying), that he was emotionally damaging to those around him, but there was simply no where else to go with the character. Another "Mitchell tries to good again and he really means it... this time" tale? Please, no.
Checking out comments of people who object to the finale on grounds other than "but Aidan is hot!" and/or "but what about my 'ship?", I've seen the complaint that Mitchell's suicide-by-George negates the message of the show and implies it's no use to struggle and try being human because you're found to fail anyway. Which is not what I got from it at all. Mitchell was unable to live as a human (well, as a human who isn't a serial killer), or live by human ethics, but that was him as an individual, and in the end, he came full circle to his beginning as a vampire/end as a human being: this time, he did die not only for the sake of his own friends but of this time for strangers, to wit, all those future victims that now won't be. He made a choice neither the soldier John Mitchell (who wanted to save his platoon but no more) nor the vampire he was for the most part of his unlife was able to, for all this "I want to be punished" claims, a choice that yes, there was some humanity in him beyond the need to survive. At the end of his arc, Mitchell was human (and, as opposed to his victims, died a death he wished surrounded by people who loved him).
Trying to be honest: would I feel different if Mitchell had been my favourite instead of my least favourite character on Being Human? Maybe. Maybe I would at least experience fannish woe in addition to a fannish high. But I hope I still would have considered his death earned both in the positive and the negative sense of the word, and the right storytelling choice. As it is, I will buy this season on dvd as soon as it's available - which I did for none of the previous seasons - will rewatch often, and will be glued on my tv screen once the fourth season starts. This despite the fact that the ending of this one actually would serve as a great show finale as well, but: I love the set-up we're left with. And I love the characters. As they are now, and with all the potential they have for stories yet to come.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 05:33 am (UTC)Re: Jo - I remember on the forums and email lists back then there was really the argument Duncan's reaction ought to have been Joe's, and that he was a bad friend because it wasn't. This annoyed me even then because I thought Duncan was in an incredibly difficult position and tried to do right by all parties, which included Cassandra and this most definitely meant not reacting to her accusations with "you're a nutter, no way Methos would ever etc.!" He obviously hoped there was some kind of explanation (wouldn't put it past him to hope for another mysterious Methos doppelganger) before the jimmy scene, but he took Cassandra's words absolutely seriously and had no doubt that all this had happened to her (and her village). Younger me also thought Joe was displaying a double standard because two seasons earlier in the Kirin/Kage episode Joe was the one saying about an evil immortal who had turned over a new leaf that scum like that never changed and Duncan ought to behead him already and was foolish to give him a chance, whereas Duncan, who'd seen Kage's villainy first hand, was nonetheless willing to wait and see (btw, the reformed Kirin was indeed reformed, and fandom's reactions again were very telling - because we'd met this guy not as nice Adam but as scum first and only in an episode, they thought Joe was right there, too, and Duncan was taking too much of a risk letting him walk away).
...and then, years later, I like you clued in to the fact that Joe's reaction was in fact typical rape apologia. Which depressingly is displayed even today everywhere in real life (did you hear about that New York Times thing).
Love your idea about Cassandra and Rebecca. I think I'm going with Parda's explanation that Cassandra generally is better with a sword but froze when confronted with her old nightmares. (Plus of course there has to be a downside to being able to use the Voice to avoid duels in general.)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 09:19 am (UTC)I love the Kirin/Kage episode! It was smart and didn't take the easy way out, and I love that Duncan struggled with his decision. I think he made the right call too, though I'm not surprised that fandom reacted the way it did.
I'm continually amazed by Duncan's moral courage. I don't know if he always makes the right decision, but the fact that he tries, that he does his best to question and understand and find an answer, then carry through that answer if justice demands it, is something I find incredible. *points to icon*
Joe's reaction is so very human. It was wrong, pathetically wrong, and yet I can see why the writers let him blame the victim (since this is a TV show) so that we could contrast it with Duncan's reaction. I'm just sorry that more people in fandom didn't recognise Joe's rape apologia for what it was.
I don't think you know