And at the end she pretty much negates her argument by pointing out that it's today's viewers who look at things in this way.
I phrased that badly: I didn't mean that it was a problem of perception, but more that if a male character on one of today's shows was suddenly thrust into a plotline where he started acting like Angel in the Angel-Faith-Buffy SL, viewers wouldn't buy it: b/c the preceding canon, and characterization, and setup for the ship, wouldn't have "prepared" the viewer to interpret his actions correctly. There has to be the right...the right atmosphere in place for it, IMO. I think that if viewers were presented with the exact canon for BtVS/AtS now, audiences would buy it. The problem is that I think it wouldn't happen in the current TV atmosphere in the first place.
Also that meta seems less of a meta and more of a hatefest on the CW and a lauding of Buffy/Angel- while completely ignoring all the problems in other relationships on that series, like Buffy and Spike.
Oh, I've ranted about Buffy/Spike a-plenty in the past. But the thing with that ship is that I think it's a fascinating "tracker" for the way the "tail-end of the backlash," as you put it, played out in real time. The show began with Spike threatening to stake Drusilla to "prove" his "love" for Buffy and Buffy treating that with the ridicule it deserved, then in S6 moved onto an actual honest presentation of the kind of obsession that Spike thought was love and how that was harmful for Buffy and how she got pulled into it b/c of PTSD, and then in S7 presented the exact same relationship as "romantic": whereas a lot of shows now just begin with S7 Spuffy.
I get their point, but I also think the author should broaden their tv-watching scope before assuming what happens on the CW (a network aimed at 16-24yr-olds) happens everywhere. A meta on the problematic perception of romance on tv should be just that.
That's a good point. I chose BtVS and BA as an example b/c I think that's what my flist would be most familiar with. Thing is, I can think of lots of shows that did a good job from a similar time period (or at least, better than shows generally do now.) Mark Greene and Carol Hathaway's friendship on ER, Doug Ross's friendship with Susan Lewis and contentious relationship with Kerry Weaver on the same show, Charlie Salinger on Party of Five and his relationships with his sisters Claudia and Julia (and how that related to his romance with Kirsten), etc.
These days, I'm hard pressed to come up with similar examples on any other shows I know: look at the latest horrific plot development on Fringe, for example. Even on Once Upon a Time, which I like b/c it has lots of men and women interacting in non-romantic ways, and has significant relationships between men and women that are completely platonic, still wouldn't Go There the way AtS did with Angel and Faith, IMO. The Good Wife irritated me with the way it handled Will/Alicia. The same goes for Grey's Anatomy and its attitude to workplace relationships. etc.
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timeasmymeasure
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I phrased that badly: I didn't mean that it was a problem of perception, but more that if a male character on one of today's shows was suddenly thrust into a plotline where he started acting like Angel in the Angel-Faith-Buffy SL, viewers wouldn't buy it: b/c the preceding canon, and characterization, and setup for the ship, wouldn't have "prepared" the viewer to interpret his actions correctly. There has to be the right...the right atmosphere in place for it, IMO. I think that if viewers were presented with the exact canon for BtVS/AtS now, audiences would buy it. The problem is that I think it wouldn't happen in the current TV atmosphere in the first place.
Also that meta seems less of a meta and more of a hatefest on the CW and a lauding of Buffy/Angel- while completely ignoring all the problems in other relationships on that series, like Buffy and Spike.
Oh, I've ranted about Buffy/Spike a-plenty in the past. But the thing with that ship is that I think it's a fascinating "tracker" for the way the "tail-end of the backlash," as you put it, played out in real time. The show began with Spike threatening to stake Drusilla to "prove" his "love" for Buffy and Buffy treating that with the ridicule it deserved, then in S6 moved onto an actual honest presentation of the kind of obsession that Spike thought was love and how that was harmful for Buffy and how she got pulled into it b/c of PTSD, and then in S7 presented the exact same relationship as "romantic": whereas a lot of shows now just begin with S7 Spuffy.
I get their point, but I also think the author should broaden their tv-watching scope before assuming what happens on the CW (a network aimed at 16-24yr-olds) happens everywhere. A meta on the problematic perception of romance on tv should be just that.
That's a good point. I chose BtVS and BA as an example b/c I think that's what my flist would be most familiar with. Thing is, I can think of lots of shows that did a good job from a similar time period (or at least, better than shows generally do now.) Mark Greene and Carol Hathaway's friendship on ER, Doug Ross's friendship with Susan Lewis and contentious relationship with Kerry Weaver on the same show, Charlie Salinger on Party of Five and his relationships with his sisters Claudia and Julia (and how that related to his romance with Kirsten), etc.
These days, I'm hard pressed to come up with similar examples on any other shows I know: look at the latest horrific plot development on Fringe, for example. Even on Once Upon a Time, which I like b/c it has lots of men and women interacting in non-romantic ways, and has significant relationships between men and women that are completely platonic, still wouldn't Go There the way AtS did with Angel and Faith, IMO. The Good Wife irritated me with the way it handled Will/Alicia. The same goes for Grey's Anatomy and its attitude to workplace relationships. etc.