Question The Hot Topic: Joss Whedon and the male character

[Taake]

It's time for another hot topic...

Let’s talk boys! This topic came to my mind through @Scobro who asked if Whedon’s male characters are really heroic or sympathetic, which got me to think about the general development of the male characters of the Buffyverse.


If we start with Connor we have a male character that is lamentably one-note as most can agree, like him or dislike him, Connor was kind of stagnant during his time on the show (until by magic removed in order to stop the whining that audience and actor alike had grown oh so tired of. Kind of a lazy solution considering the character started out with a lot of potential.)

But if we think about other major male characters Angel, Spike, Gunn, Groo, Xander, Oz, Riley…*

... all of their exterior circumstances change – who they’re in love with, killing or not killing innocents, what group the affiliate with – but at the end of the day aren’t they kind of the exact same guys as when we first met them?

Personality wise we could lift Angel out of season 5 and place him back in Buffy season 1 and he would be much the same – broody, prone to unilateral decisions and burdened by his soul. Seven years of experiences has given him a group that he belongs to and some romantic affiliations, but at the end of the day – is he really so different?

Same goes for Spike. Superficially he might seem to have changed more than Angel but with the exception of not killing innocents anymore he could also slip into his previous mold like a glove, only his target of violence and love has changed, but Spike as a person rather remains the same.

The only time we ever see Gunn truly change is when he gets altered by Wolfram and Hart, a forced and not genuine change. Groo… well Groo doesn’t really change at all actually. Riley only briefly tries not to be corn-fed Iowa soldier boy but then goes straight back to his mold. Oz is exactly the same, even as a werewolf, and he had been brought back for season 7 I have no doubt he would have been that very same laid back season 3 guy only with some stories about controlling your inner wereself so you can remain laid-back. Xander continues to be the funny guy in the background but who also remains insecure and jealous very much like his teenage-self. They toe around the edge of letting Xander grow when we see his family and his fears of getting married but it never really feels like that much comes off it… maybe after he loses his eye...


Comparatively if you take Buffy, Willow, Faith, Cordelia, Dawn or Fred for example and take the last iteration of them on the show and compare them to when we first met them – that have all rather massively changed throughout their journeys.

Now I’m not saying that the guys don’t develop at all but are they as developed as their female counterparts? In short – does Joss Whedon struggle more with writing compelling, evolving, male characters? What do you guys think?


*I’m excluding Wesley because I think he is the one male character who genuinely went on a journey and changed and grew noticeably throughout the arc of the shows.


(also I’m excluding Firefly from this because the show lasted so shortly it’s hard for any character to change and grow during such a limited time)

 

[Buffy Summers]

I would go one step further to say that in the ways they DID change, they were not changes for the better. I think maybe Joss CARED about the female characters more - his reason for making the show was to take that different perspective, so I think it was forefront in his mind and frankly that's where the "prestige" was for him. He wasn't going to get headlines for making a great detective character, but a lesbian character? Page 1!

 

[Skanky Vamp]

I think he (Joss) had trouble writing the heroic male character. You can see in the first few seasons on Angel when Greenwalt was the showrunner, Angel actually seemed heroic. But then it changed. That got me looking at Buffy, and really, there were no heroic male characters in Buffy. The closest thing would be a Riley, and we see the results of that.

But yes, I agree with the lesbian remark.

 

[thetopher]

Giles.

I would argue that Giles grew throughtout all the Seasons that he was a regular. He goes from stuffy British Watcher who is confounded by everything Buffy is/does to her doting Father-figure.
He knows tragic love, the loss of his esteemed position and therefore his own sense of self, and goes on to regain it. It's a shame he suffers from the poor writing of S6 and his character is ignored/absent for a lot of 7, but for those first five yeah, I'd say that he grew quite a lot.
I can't see S5 Giles putting up with half the stuff S1 Giles does.

I'd also argue that Angel did grow to some extent on his own show, because he becomes less of a loner and finds a purpose that he didn't really have on Buffy. He does regress some but ultimately he's not the same at the end as he is at the beginning.

Note that I think their is a difference between character depth (simply finding more out about a character and their origins) and character growth (where they evolve from where they were when we knew them first) and I think with Angel we get both.

It also helps that Joss has admitted not 'getting' Angel as a character so it's left to David Greenwalt and Tim Minear to develop a lot of the nuance of his character- which I think is where a lot of Angel's growth comes from, not from Joss.

But generally I agree with you, looking at characters like Buffy, Willow and Faith who grow immensely from their first appearance through to their last (although I'd say that some characters, like Anya or Harmony, don't really grow that much at all, so it isn't always about gender) are much more commom than any of the male characters.

Oz- not really. Taciturn guy becomes taciturn werewolf guy.
Riley changes and then simply reverts to type- like Buffy was some sort of blip for him.
Xander grows in the final season (and the season 8 comics) but before that he's pretty much highshcool Xander writ-large.
Gunn chages a little, but basically he just gets less angry as the show goes along. By S5 he's kind of back to where he was.
Spikes gets a bit of depth to his character from when he first see him, but only truly grows in Buffy S5 and Angel S5, which ain't much.
And I'd agree that Wesley is a true exception.

So basically if you're a slayer or a watcher or THE vampire with a soul (which incidentally are my top five character picks) then you tend to 'grow up' more. 🙂

 

[EVIL UU]

Whedon doesn't write male characters. He writes female fantasies and fantasies don't grow. Basically, there are 3 groups of issues with men in BtVS:

Their lives revolve around women

Angel decides to fight evil because of Buffy. Loses his soul because of Buffy. Buffy is his true happiness - what does it mean? It means that without Buffy he'll always be miserable. Even Angelus is obsessed with Buffy. Spike? It's the same shit. Mom, Dru, Buffy, soul and so on. Xander? Buffy's the most important thing in his life, more important than his actual girlfriends and his personal happiness. Same with Giles. Oz? He overcomes his wolf issue, full moon is fine but seeing Willow still turns him into a monster. Riley quits the initiative because Buffy's more important among other things.

They have no friends because friendship between men is evil!

It's somewhat different in AtS but I think that the point still stands. Friendship between men is either non-existent or demonized to a ridiculous degree in BtVS. Xander has no male friends ( not sure about Giles, bear with me ) After Jesse dies the only guys he's fairly friendly towards are Oz and Riley - the love interests of his actual best friends. Spike and Giles (again, Xander ) have no male friends. Angel has no male friends in BtVS. Riley has friends, Forest and Graham, and they are portrayed as assholes and his relationship with them as damaging to his relationship with Buffy. The only male characters with male friends, the nerds, are evil and misogynistic.

Rape! Rape! Rape!

Every guy is a rapist, sometimes it's played straight ( Angel, Spike, Xander ) sometimes through metaphors ( Oz, Riley, Giles ) Why? Rape is among the most popular female sexual fantasies, so pure pandering right here.

Man in BtVS is a bro-less women-obsessed rapist. Subhuman animal. And we're what, expecting character development?