Culture Vulture
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Culture
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by Anne Moore
When we think of guilty pleasures,
what comes to mind first? Eating Ben and Jerry'’s while sitting
on the couch watching The O.C.? These pleasures make us guilty
because we know we’re doing something that, while it feels good,
is probably not too good for us in the long run. In her book review "Super
Women," (January, 2005) Elizabeth Allen seems to be arguing that
"revisionist feminist fiction" is one of these guilty pleasures,
chiding the reader not to look to fiction for role models, but to instead
strive to be a superhero in her daily life.
Okay, fair enough. I don't think, however,
that reading and being are mutually exclusive. Can't we watch or read
about superheroes and simultaneously strive to be them? In the spirit
of full disclosure, I have to admit that I've taken Allen's article a
bit personally since Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Anne of Green Gables
are two of my all-time-favorite pleasures, guilty or otherwise. In the
sixth grade, I changed the spelling of my name from Ann to Anne, directly
influenced by Anne Shirley's claim that Ann-without-an-e looked horribly
plain and incomplete.
I know that Allen's claims of the "wonder
bread" nature of Buffy are true in many ways, and I've written papers
myself to that effect, making much the same point as the essay from Girls
Who Bite Back she cites – that Buffy is consistently defined
in opposition to women of color on the show, and that this doubling makes
Buffy work as a feminist icon. The dangerous aspects of her character,
like out-of-control sexuality without guilt are foisted onto these Other
characters and Buffy is thus able to remain pure.
I don't believe, however, that the show's
lack of consciousness around race robs it of value. For instance, the
relationship between Tara and Willow is perhaps the first representation
of the kind of lesbian couple who begin to look the same over time, instead
of being clearly differentiated along gender lines. And the show's engagement
of feminist issues doesn't stop with Tara and Willow, either—Buffy's
development over the course of the show illuminates both the possibility
and the socially imposed problems of female power. Since the show addresses
feminist issues so explicitly, its shortcomings in addressing issues of
race become almost impossible not to notice. By using the show's lack
of diversity as a reason to write it off altogether, Allen denies the
possibility of reader resistance, and the ability of readers to take what
they want from a text and leave the rest.
Her critique of Anne of Green Gables
follows the same logic – because Anne settles with childhood crush
Gilbert, all the power of the young Anne is just negated? Ultimately,
Allen is making the same mistake in her critique that she's throwing at
the people who find value in these shows – only looking at a piece
of the picture, not the whole thing.
Even though Ally Sheedy's makeover at the end
of The Breakfast Club is heartbreaking and awful, which version
of her character sticks with you, as a viewer? The Talbots-looking girl
from the end of the movie, flush with excitement over her new jock boyfriend,
or the witchy-creepy-cool girl sitting in the back of detention eating
a Cap'n Crunch sandwich and decorating her drawings with dandruff?
This shift in attention from the later,
more heterosexually defined version of the character to the earlier one
doesn't make her transformation less awful, but the staying power of that
transformation is mediated by our choices as a viewer. The earlier version
of the character is the one that carries cultural weight—early-90's
riot grrls were copying the Ally Sheedy from the beginning of the movie,
not the end.
At the end of the day, if we throw out all
the texts that we find problematic, there won't be any texts left. And
maybe this is Allen's point – that we shouldn't be looking to texts
for heroes, but instead should work on becoming those heroes ourselves.
But don't these fictional heroes help us to become real ones?
Reading Anne of Green Gables as
a kid, I felt a kind of solidarity with Anne, the dreamy, bookish weirdo,
and this feeling of identification helped me to believe there was a world
beyond my middle school where I'd be rewarded for my own weird bookishness.
And sure, her marriage to Gilbert is depressing, but I was always much
more interested in her relationship with Diana Barry anyway. Part of what
we do as readers is go through texts, mining them for the bits we find
meaningful. In saying this, I by no means intend to imply that we should
just ignore the racist or sexist or homophobic aspects of the texts that
surround us, but that we can use these moments as jumping-off points for
analysis and critique.
I'll admit, there are problems with even
my favorite shows, but I don't think those problems make the shows themselves
entirely worthless. Ideally, if a text is smart enough, it will spur conversation,
about its failings. Besides which, I'm not interested in perfect heroes,
even fictional ones.
Anne Moore lives in Winooski and tries to feel little guilt over pleasure.