h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Perhaps as a SWM I am the last person that should comment on this subject, but here goes nothing.

Given the axioms that you are working from about the dead/evil lesbian cliché, then yes, Willow and Tara's relationship ended in exactly that fashion. There is a suggetion that Amber Benson is still part of the crew and will be back. Whether or not that will actually happen, will be well handled, and what it will all entail has yet to be seen. We have seen other characters brought back from the dead, and we know, for example Joyce, that there are other mechanisms than invoking Osiris for the return of a character, so it isn't necessarily all over.

It certainly deeply upset me, but in a fashion that had nothing to do with the cliché, I'm just not sensitised to it. If we are allowed to forget the cliché for the moment, then I'm not convinced that any other piece of TV would have had the impact. Killing Xander is just about the only thing that might have triggered Willow to such a frenzy, but somehow death of a lifelong friend doesn't, in my scales anyway, equate to death of lover as a driving force for sheer rage and depth of sorrow. That is my honest appraisal of the plot device, and at the end of the day all the characters are plot devices, as they must be. Some might be harder to kill than others, but they are still potentially killable, just look at Buffy. Within the cliché, if we discount 'happy lesbians should be sacrosanct' it is still the best plot device available, but against that we should consider adding to the cliché.

Let me contrast it to one that I am sensitised to, the 'All witches are evil' cliché. Mainly the same origin of the sentiment after all, and one that can certainly be added to by the Willow/Tara storyline. After all we have the 'Is Tara able to do magic because she's half demon' Willow turning evil, abusing her 'powers' and having to give up etc. The only successul, long term and surviving spell caster in BtVS are both highly educated white males (who are thus traditionally not called witches, whatever modern practice may be) and both of whom require long, complicated incantations, usually read from a book for any sort of magic, most unlike our two witches, certainly through S3-6. Of the 'witch' characters (Willow, Tara, Jenny, Amy and someone in the witchhunt episode) we have dangerously addicted and trying to destroy the world; dead; dead; rat then recovered and tempting into addiction; and disappeared without trace. Parts of the pagan community have been up in arms about it too, and the messages sound very similar to this one.

Many things can be said about BtVS, and have been. It is ground breaking and cliché breaking, but much though it would be nice if it could break them all, that just isn't reasonable. Clichés exist, to some extent, because they reflect, however unfairly, unreasonably and just down right wrongly, the views of some sections of society. Unfortunately for the people coloured by the cliché, if you are going to tell a good story to ANY audience, you have to look at what the audience believes and that means occasionally supporting a story line that looks like a cliché.

I haven't seen all the other shows that the original author alluded to as supporting the myth, and am still in the middle of 24 so haven't seen the lesbian yet. The only ones I can comment on are Babylon 5 and Xena.

Yes there is an evil lesbian in B5, although actually it is not clear that she is a lesbian in her evil self (there is a complicated implanted personality storyline that suggests that her evil self is not lesbian). Her partner is later portrayed as bisexual, and has an equally unfulfilling potential hetero relationship that she won't let herself explore, so adds to the unhappiness, but is a good, decisive officer who rises to the very top of her profession by the end of the show. It gives the impression that she chooses to marry her job and live a relatively unfulfilled sexual life, a choice for many women (however unfair) that reach that position, and not a function of her sexuality.

I'm trying very hard to think of a dead or evil lesbian in Xena. Throughout much of the show there was the infamous lesbian subtext. But I honestly can't think of any other lesbians in the show. And Xena ends up dead. But does this support the cliché? Not to mind, Xena dies attoning for her misdeeds, and around the time of those misdeeds she had been pursuing an active hetero sex life. Granted she went off to Japan with a woman, but there was not any real indication of a sexual relationship, it was portrayed more as seeking to learn more from this woman.

I'd like to know, if would you rather have shows that push at the boundaries, and sometimes end up with the boundaries pushing back, or shows that stay nice and safe all the time. BtVS did have the first happy, long term, lesbian relationship on TV. The author certainly makes a compelling case that the actors involved didn't get equal billing with their straight counterparts but that is a different argument. Thanks to BtVS, the next time there is a lesbian relationship anywhere on TV there is a better chance it will be happier, longer lasting and so forth, because it has been shown that it can work. I want the world to be a more comfortable place for us all to live in, and TV to reflect and even to lead us down that way. But I'm happier for those changes to come one step at a time rather than by a revolution that might just chuck us all back in the mire of it being worse than it currently is.