I know for BtVS/Angel and even Firefly the "villains" are constructed in such a way that viewers are much more comfortable calling them Evil than they are in the political world of their own lives.
So killing (or whatever) is more acceptable when it is vampires at the gates than it is when it is terrorists? Perhaps this sort of inconsistency an be best explained by knee-jerk liberalism, but I'd like to think there is something else going on. (Also, I don't think fandom is that liberal.)
Also, much media is very anti-authoritarian, which I think is a theme American liberals are very comfortable with.
Doesn't account for the appeal of President Roslin (for which I can't of course hold you responsible)--or even President Bartlett at some key moments--but yes, that does seem to be some key element. Which does suggest that maybe there is a deeper, more complex and more subtle morality at work? But...
Additionally, that comfort can cause said liberals to gloss over the fact that the anti-authoritarian people are enacting their own authority/power in sometimes problematic ways.
Exactly! And that's precisely the situation with my Watcher!verse Dawn--she's become an institutional power in her own right, getting to decide who lives and who dies. (And I write about that because of course that has its appeal as a manifestation of the will to power.)
And I think there are plenty of times when within the show Buffy and/or Angel set themselves up as an institutional (counter-)power; Buffy, for example, has authority by virtue of being the Slayer--an authority which the show not only fails to problematize, but which season 7 valorizes in the (relatively nonsensical) outcome to the Slayer mutiny.
I understand why Joss made some of the decisions he did; after all he was making art, not propaganda. (Although season 7, which really did begin to feel like propaganda in the way it forced our loyalties, left me scratching my head. But I do think there were fannish voices which did call him on it.) But that opens up the question of whose artistic standards we are using and whether objective aesthetic values can be said to exist, and how those values are caught up in our ethical values. And I just don't know the answers to those questions.
no subject
So killing (or whatever) is more acceptable when it is vampires at the gates than it is when it is terrorists? Perhaps this sort of inconsistency an be best explained by knee-jerk liberalism, but I'd like to think there is something else going on. (Also, I don't think fandom is that liberal.)
Also, much media is very anti-authoritarian, which I think is a theme American liberals are very comfortable with.
Doesn't account for the appeal of President Roslin (for which I can't of course hold you responsible)--or even President Bartlett at some key moments--but yes, that does seem to be some key element. Which does suggest that maybe there is a deeper, more complex and more subtle morality at work? But...
Additionally, that comfort can cause said liberals to gloss over the fact that the anti-authoritarian people are enacting their own authority/power in sometimes problematic ways.
Exactly! And that's precisely the situation with my Watcher!verse Dawn--she's become an institutional power in her own right, getting to decide who lives and who dies. (And I write about that because of course that has its appeal as a manifestation of the will to power.)
And I think there are plenty of times when within the show Buffy and/or Angel set themselves up as an institutional (counter-)power; Buffy, for example, has authority by virtue of being the Slayer--an authority which the show not only fails to problematize, but which season 7 valorizes in the (relatively nonsensical) outcome to the Slayer mutiny.
I understand why Joss made some of the decisions he did; after all he was making art, not propaganda. (Although season 7, which really did begin to feel like propaganda in the way it forced our loyalties, left me scratching my head. But I do think there were fannish voices which did call him on it.) But that opens up the question of whose artistic standards we are using and whether objective aesthetic values can be said to exist, and how those values are caught up in our ethical values. And I just don't know the answers to those questions.