The following letter has been sent to Salon, under my and Amy's names. I have no idea whether or not they will publish it:
Dear Salon,
We are the authors, along with other members of "The Kitten, The Witches, and the Bad Wardrobe" (a popular Willow/Tara fan board), of an internet FAQ titled "The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Clich." We are therefore likely part of what Stephanie Zacharek referred to as the "weeks of buzzing on 'Buffy' online message boards" regarding Tara's death and subsequent events on the show.
Zacharek stated that "some fans in the lesbian community have asserted that by killing off one-half of the show's lesbian couple . . . Whedon destroyed one of the few positive lesbian role models on television." This is indeed something that we, at least, have said. She then went on to say, however, that the boards have, as a result, been saying that both 'Buffy' and Joss Whedon are "anti-gay" and additionally "misogynist and/or racist."
That is not something we ever argued, nor is it something we have seen said by the vast majority of those angry about Tara's death. In fact, we went to great lengths to say that we decidedly did not think Tara was killed, or Willow turned evil, for homophobic reasons on the part of Joss Whedon or anyone else.
Our primary objection was that these events, however they were intended, still fall into the clich of television lesbians dying, turning evil, and never knowing true happiness. This clich is so pervasive that happy lesbian couples on television are almost impossible to find, whereas dead ones can be found - or rather, no longer found - on scores of shows. This matters; heterosexual couples can look at the media and see hundreds of representations of themselves, some happy, some sad, some good, some evil, some alive, some dead. Lesbian couples see an almost uniformly bleak message informing them that they are doomed to misery and pain.
We are particular angry at 'Buffy' because at various times the show's writers have indicated that they were aware of the clich and said that this is exactly the kind of thing they wouldn't do. Doug Petrie said, "We've all seen shows where if you have any kind of gay tendencies, you must be killed or made to suffer for no other reason other than you're gay. We're hyper aware of that . . . we can avoid what we feel is this old clich" (Sci-Fi Universe 2/21/00). Joss Whedon himself said, "...one post from a gay or questioning teen saying the show helped them is worth six hundred hate letters...Here's the word: Tara's not gonna disappear" (Bronze Beta 5/24/00).
Obviously, after seeing a two-year long lesbian relationship on the show, we are aware that Joss Whedon and co. didn't kill Tara because she was gay. We are aware that Willow was not made into a "cut-out angry lesbian", as Ms. Zacharek put it, nor did we ever accuse them of doing so. We are aware that no couples on Buffy have ever ended particularly happily. We are also aware that they are under no obligation to anyone and can do whatever they like with their show.
However, we are saddened and angry that Tara has, for whatever reason, been added to the heaping pile of dead TV lesbians. We are saddened and angry that this happened on a show where the writers said they were aware that there were too many dead lesbians on TV already, and claimed to be above falling into that clich themselves. And then proceeded to handle things so badly that Tara was shot at the end of an episode in which she and Willow had extended and explicit lesbian sex for pretty much the first time on the show, cementing the connection between lesbian sex and death securely.
And, while certainly Buffy couples in general are unhappy as well, there are plenty of other heterosexual couples on other shows, while Willow and Tara were practically unique. Joss Whedon and his fellow writers killed the unicorn for the sake of this plotline.
Whatever the intention, however well or poorly the last episodes of this season were written, however much other characters suffer on the show, the fact remains that 'Buffy' ended this season with the dead character being the lesbian.
As usual.
The full text of "The Death of Tara, the Fall of Willow and The Dead/Evil Lesbian Clich FAQ" can be found at the kitten board,
www.froggyfrog.com/kitten
I think I'm going to go away and work on my cynical side.
