Discuss The Representation of Otherness and Difference in The Media (Including Advertisement) With Reference To at Least One Visual/textual Example
Discuss The Representation of Otherness and Difference in The Media (Including Advertisement) With Reference To at Least One Visual/textual Example
Discuss The Representation of Otherness and Difference in The Media (Including Advertisement) With Reference To at Least One Visual/textual Example
A Jew, a lesbian, a witch and an awkward ginger computer geek walk into a Californian
suburban high school. Meet Willow Rosenberg, multi-faceted representation of that which is Other
in WASP America, beloved main character in TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer who has the honour of
being the only character other than the titular Buffy to appear in every episode. Willow was at once
a girl-next-door, normal teenager with whom millions of viewers identified every week and a
rampaging evil witch of the Jewish persuasion who happens to sleep with girls. She is both ‘hero’ and
‘villain’, all in one Jewish lesbian body. (Hall 1997, 227-228) Willow is the ultimate representation of
otherness being drawn into the norm. Reducing the ‘other’ to ‘one of us’ is a human need but it is
not useful. As Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, said after Willow was revealed to be “kinda gay”1 and a
small negative viewer reaction; “we’re going to shift away from this whole lifestyle choice that
Willow has made… From now on, Willow will no longer be a Jew.” (Stafford, 15-16)
Buffy is a blonde cheerleader whose popularity at her school previous to Sunnydale High was
unparalleled. Her mother is a lone parent and as it turns out, Buffy is the ‘Slayer’. She is strong,
independent and defends the world from evil. Willow, however, is a tomboy with bad fashion sense
and infallible naïveté and optimism. It is revealed that she is a Jew, but this only comes to light when
in contrast with the WASP norm.2 Willow’s Jewishness is hidden until it is eradicated – when Willow
‘becomes’ a lesbian, she is no longer Jewish.
When seeking ‘to Other’ Willow, a handful of references to her Jewishness are made but
only for comic effect and “…in the first mention of her Jewishness, [Willow states] only that her
[High School project] “egg” is Jewish, rather than declaring that she is” (Seidel-Arpaci and Alderman
2003):
Xander: You gotta take care of the egg. It’s a baby. You gotta keep it safe and
teach it Christian values.
1
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, s03e16 “Doppelgangland” 1999. Dir. Joss Whedon.
2
Indeed, many non-white characters are demons which come to destroy the world from the Outside; abroad.
Almost all ‘ethnic’ characters die. From Within, are vampires, from the UK (Spike and Angel) (Seidel-Arpaci and
Alderman 2003). They are, eventually, good: “in these rehabilitated humans and demons, the main characters
and the audience confront the Other: the marginalized figures who are worthy of inclusion, the nonhumans
who are people after all, the strangers who become us.” (Money 2002, 98)
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Willow: My egg is Jewish.
Xander: Then teach it that Dreidel song.3
In S03, Amends, a Christmas special, the Bad is defeated by snow. Christmas defeats ‘the
Bad’; Christianity defeats Evil4 (Seidel-Arpaci and Alderman 2003): “As Nietzsche says . . . it was
Christianity that established the Devil in the world. . . . Does a demonic presence require at least an
implied Christian one?” (Erikson 2002) Must the evil of the world therefore be a non-Christian
Other? The denotative construct of Willow Rosenberg and Buffy Summers indicates Jew and non-
Jew, Other and American. The myth is that a Jew can only fit in if the Jew hides Judaism. The
connotations imply that Willow must be the geeky Jewish awkward outsider whose acceptance and
assimilation into a WASP society can only come via the all-American Buffy – this fixes the floating
meaning of the myth.5
Does Willow need to be overtly Jewish? Would this not incur the Ostjuden6 stereotype? By
reducing her Otherness, Willow can assimilate into the “norm” WASP culture. The preferred
meaning of the Willow Rosenberg myth is that she assimilates, loses her non-WASP characteristics,
and thus becomes a better person. There is only so much difference we can handle on our TV
screens, and therefore Willow’s Jewishness is only dropped fully (when it had, before, only been
precarious) in order to make room for Willow’s homosexuality. Indeed, as we read the episode
where Tara dies, Seeing Red7; it is homosexuality that creates the ‘Big Bad’ of S06 – Dark Willow. The
titular Red is Tara’s blood when she is shot, the red of Willow and Tara’s conjugal bed sheets and the
red of Willow’s eyes as she transforms into Dark Willow. Red, the colour of menstrual fluid and
blood (The Blood is the Life8) is also the colour of anger and fear in our society – not by coincidence.
Willow and Tara’s relationship embodies the lesbian sex=death cliché which has
impregnated our view of the world. There are so few lesbian-couple storylines which do not end in
misery. Disappointingly, Tara’s death is
“at the end of an episode in which she was implied to have spent practically the
entire time having sex with Willow; further, she died immediately after a scene of
heavy sexual flirtation and beside the bed [in which] she and Willow had made love.”
(Booth 2008)
3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, s02e12 “Bad Eggs” 1998. Dir. David Greenwalt.
4
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, s03e10 “Amends” 1998. Dir. Joss Whedon.
5
It was an American truth that American means WASP – and only now is this changing. No longer is the
Melting Pot to melt into a Germanic heritage but Spanish is commonly accepted as the second language of the
USA and Barack Obama’s Father was Kenyan.
6
Jewish Virtual Library, Anti-Jewish Plans of the Nazis Published Before Their Rise to Power. N.d.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/naziplan.html (accessed 12 16, 2011)
7
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, s6e19 “Seeing Red” 2002. Dir. Michael Gershman.
8
Deuteronomy 12:23.
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No other Buffy deaths happen this way.9 Tara dies after Buffy’s resurrection: connotative
meaning; one dead lesbian to save one straight WASP (strong Christian imagery). Willow goes on a
murderous rampage and tries to destroy the world. Only a man, indeed Willow’s teenage crush
Xander, can possibly save the world from Willow. Denotative implication is that love conquers all –
but connotation is that whereas heterosexual love saves the world, lesbian love threatens to destroy
us all.
Willow is a positive role model, as a woman with a strong lesbian relationship who is
extremely (magically) powerful. On the other hand, her extreme magical power nearly leads to
world destruction and Willow is Otherised as an Addict to magic. Her homosexuality is part of the
“lesbian sex is evil and must be punished” pejorative archetype. Lesbian Willow has stronger magical
powers than Jewish Willow. Willow is the only non-WASP recurring character but her Jewish identity
is dropped and was never pronounced except for (rare) comedy. Willow never announces her
sexuality – she claims to be “kinda gay” but never that she is gay. This, in combination with Xander’s
‘rescue’ of Earth, connotes that Willow never was really gay and could be ‘rescued’ from
homosexuality.
… idealised images often gain more force when contrasted with… [an] Other… The
manner in which certain identities and subjectivities perform within narratives help
to reproduce and reassert the rewards of being a good citizen whilst concomitantly
projecting the perils of being ideologically-subversive. (Cheung 2009)
When Willow is a good citizen, she loses her Otherness. In early seasons, once Willow gets a
boyfriend, she grows in her role within the Scooby Gang. Then, the Other threatens this norm
(lesbianism), she becomes the ultimate Other (Dark Willow/season six’s ‘Big Bad’); losing all that is
dear to her (Tara) and almost destroying the world until Willow can be drawn back into the norm by
taming her magical destruction and removing her homosexuality. Whedon removes the Other and
keeps the social power.
9
Angel turns evil after sex with Buffy. However the connotative meaning is that man, who permits sex to
occur, treats women badly after sex: “The writers explicitly said that they were doing that deliberately … Tara's
post-sex death happened in a show where the connection between sex itself and bad things following sex had
already been deliberately established and discussed … Tara and Willow were punished for having lesbian sex …
Angel's fate as a straight white male was not an oft-repeated example of a damning and hurtful cliché, but
rather a fresh, clever metaphor for male sexual behaviour [sic] … Willow and Tara's fate is an old look at an old
story that perpetuates a hopeless outlook for lesbians.” (Booth 2008)
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1635 words
Works Cited
Booth, Stephen. The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Cliché FAQ.
November 8, 2008. http://www.stephenbooth.org/lesbiancliche.htm (accessed 12 16, 2011).
Cheung, Ruby with Fleming, D. H., ed. Cinemas, Identities and Beyond. Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
Erikson, Gregory. "Sometimes you need a story: American Christianity, Vampires and Buffy." In
Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, edited by R. V. Wilcox and
D. Lavery, 108-19. Lanham, New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
Hall, Stuart. "The Spectacle of the "Other"." In Representation: Cultural Representations and
Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, 223-228. London: Open University Press, 1997.
Money, Mary Alice. "The Undemonizing of Supporting Characters in Buffy." In Fighting the Forces:
What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, edited by R. V. Wilcox and D. Lavery. Lanham,
New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
Seidel-Arpaci, Annette, and Naomi Alderman. "Imaginary Para-Sites of the Soul: Vampires and
Representations of ‘Blackness’ and ‘Jewishness’ in the Buffy/Angelverse." Edited by David
and Wilcox, Rhonda V. Lavery. Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies
(www.slayageonline.com) 3, no. 10 (2003).
Stafford, Nikki. Bite Me! The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Toronto: ECW Press, 2007.
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