hannahcisar

[hannahcisar]

Buffy the Bisexual: slaying vampires one day at a time

At the beginning of the episode when Willow’s ex boyfriend walked in the door there were looks of both shock and confusion on Willow’s  face. Throughout the beginning/middle of the episode, Willow seemed to be facing some adversity and confusion when trying to figure out if she still had feelings for Oz or if she wanted to stay in the ‘relationship’ she was currently in which was with a woman. 

The episode that we watched in class was focused a lot on Willow and her conflicts she had with Oz and her new female friend who she was showing interest in. Although the episode focused a lot on Willow, there was still the lives of others that were going on throughout the episode. When Oz first returned, he was really focused on getting back with Willow and showed much interest towards her which made her question her sexuality in that moment and honestly throughout the whole episode. After Oz found out that Willow was showing interest towards a female he got super upset and showed much anger. This episode showed the rhetoric of this though Oz turning into a werewolf which can be a metaphor for his anger in and confusion of Willow not showing interest in him anymore. As in most movies and tv shows, when there was an emotionally darker part in the episode or, for example, when Willow and Oz were talking at the end and they were both sort of sad in a way that they wouldn’t work out, the lighting got low and the music got slow. The camera would zoom in on their faces to show their emotion and would also portray this through their body language. A sort of supernatural aspect of this scene is that in today's world you do not turn into a werewolf when angry or upset. However, in this episode, when Oz found out that Willow wasn't interested in him anymore and was showing interest towards a female, his emotions got high and this can go to show in a real life situation that if one were to find this information out about their boyfriend or girlfriend it could come off at high anger and frustration, even betrayal sometimes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsF1MwBS_JQ&list=PLsPxc8YhqannrBgziXIWkW90eIt2BsKqR&index=2 I think the title of this clip itself explains what was showed throughout the clip of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The title, “Reacting to bisexual representation on TV,” represents people who are shown to be watching clips of movies/shows that show queerness in the media. This made me think of the episode we watched in class because while there were not people shown reacting to the show itself, there were characters in the episode who were reacting to it after watching it first hand. Oz, Willow's ex boyfriend, watched Willow fall in love with another woman which left him in utter shock and honestly much frustration and anger. What I also think is cool about this youtube video is that, in a way, us students in class were the people reacting to the “bisexual representation” of this episode. I mean we are quite literally taking notes of our thoughts and reactions after watching the episode on bisexual representation. I just thought it was pretty interesting to relate the thoughts and reactions of the people shown in the youtube clip to the work we are doing in this COM class. 

I feel like grandparents, or the elderly, could react way differently to the clip than Gen Z people would. This could be both in a positive and negative way. Queerness, back in the day, was obviously not thought of in a positive way. Today it is still hard because it is not all positive, but there is definitely a lot more acceptance that there was eighty years ago. The views of people from eighty years ago are going to be quite different from the views of this generation. Back then it wasn't thought to be good if you were gay, bi, trans, etc.. and to them, when a queer character would get shown on TV, they would be getting made fun of or characterized in a not so realistic way. Now in today's society, there are so many popular characters that are gay or bi and people look forward to watching episodes with those characters in it. It is super interesting to see how the views and opinions on queer media have changed over the last however many years.