ext_2448 ([identity profile] miriam-heddy.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] alixtii 2008-02-27 12:40 am (UTC)

Re: Xander (because I've been reading a lot of Spander recently)

It's probably worth thinking not just about one character's class but also about the pairings, especially as any given CoC may be the only one on the show, surrounded (often) by middle class white men.

Thinking about Xander... he's supposed to be working class, and I'd argue he's marked as working class (in an American sense) based not on his income, per se, or his early fast-food jobs or his house, but based on his alcoholic parents and what happens after Buffy and Willow go to college and he's left behind.

Spike, with whom he's so often paired, speaks with a "mockney" accent and his look is a pose, at odds with his education and pre-vamp class, but as a vamp., and especially post-chip, he becomes entirely dependent on the charity of the Scoobies, and he's always an outsider

And I think fans' reading of Xander as working class is part of the reasoning in his being paired up with Spike (well, aside from the pretty).

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