BtVS: Microaggressions

 

So once again I am responding to something I read online that I do not have a link for. I needed to sit on this for awhile before posting, and I didn't save the link.

 

Essentially, on some message board or other, some fans took issue with the scene in Help where Buffy asks Robin
Wood if he came from "the hood". The fans objected to this on the grounds that it turned Buffy, a likeable character, into someone who committed microaggressions, and that it was clear the writers didn't understand the implications of the scene.

 

I don't have a problem with fans having a problem with this moment in Help, but I disagree with these particular arguments.

 

(Note this is just about this particular exchange between Buffy and Wood - I'm not going to get into Wood's arc as a whole. That would take a much longer post.)

 

For starters, the writers of Help did not make Buffy into a microaggressor. This is because she was already a microaggressor. In What's My Line, Part 2, she mocks Kendra's accent. In Restless, she tells a black woman her hair is not suitable for the workplace. That's just off the top of my head. In neither of those moments is there any indication we're supposed to think Buffy is in the wrong. They are just more examples of Buffy being oh-so-witty.

 

By contrast, the moment in Help it's very clear Buffy is wrong. Buffy ends up embarrassed, as well she should.

 

Again, I don't have a problem with someone having a problem with the exchange in Help. I'm not the person to make that judgment. But it didn't come out of nowhere, and, unlike previous incidents, it did portray Buffy's behavior as wrong.