It's Not Homophobia, But
That Doesn't Make It Right
Creative Freedom, Responsibility
and the Death of Tara
By Robert A. Black
Over a month into the summer rerun season, one of the most talked-about subjects among fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer continues to be the death of lesbian character Tara MacLay in the episode "Seeing Red." Message boards have been filled with discussion on the subject, the media has seen a host of articles about it, and the staff of Joss Whedon's production company, Mutant Enemy, has fielded questions about it in almost every interview they've given since the episode aired.
What was it that motivated Mutant Enemy to kill off Tara's character? Is it something the fans have a right to be angry about? Didn't Mutant Enemy have the right to tell their story in any way they wanted? What exactly are the responsibilities of a TV production company with regard to its story and its audience? These are the questions I intend to address here.
Willow and Tara: Why they matter
The first issue to address is the question of why Willow and Tara matter in the first place. After all, other Buffy characters have been killed off before, and there was no firestorm of protest over their deaths. What makes Tara's death different from the others?
The difference lies in the unique nature in mainstream American television that Willow and Tara had together as a couple. They were the only realistically portrayed long-term same-sex relationship on the air - the only opportunity the gay community had to see its relationships depicted in American popular culture. When tragedy or a breakup strikes a pair of TV characters in a heterosexual relationship, heterosexual viewers who are fans of that couple can redirect their emotional investment to dozens of other couples at any given time. With the Willow/Tara relationship now gone, gay and lesbian viewers have nowhere else to go. Willow and Tara were the only couple on the dial. It can be difficult for the heterosexual community to understand how important it is to see one's self reflected onscreen. It's so common for heterosexuals that we take it for granted, often to the point where we don't even think it matters at all. But to a marginalized segment of the population, where there is a constant feeling that one's very existence is being denied, that onscreen reflection can be priceless.
A similar situation existed in the 1960s, when the first realistically depicted African-American characters began to appear onscreen. Bill Cosby's portrayal of Alexander Scott in I, Spy and Nichelle Nichols's portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek were groundbreaking roles for the African-American community. They gave African-Americans their first long-running opportunity to see themselves reflected in popular culture as something other than stupid, lazy or fit only to be a white person's servant.
Similarly, in the past gay and lesbian characters in movies or on TV have predominantly either been killed off or shown to be insane or evil. Even liberal-minded TV series like Northern Exposure and Babylon 5 fell into this pattern when they included a same-sex relationship in their stories. Today, there are several gay and lesbian characters on American TV, but none of them are in a steady long-running relationship. The fact that Willow and Tara were together was what made them unique. The relationship was greater than the two characters individually, because together they gave the gay community something that it could find nowhere else. Homophobia and the image on the screen
Given the significance of the Willow/Tara relationship, why did Mutant Enemy choose to end it? A common perception to those who are only peripherally aware of the controversy is that fans are accusing Joss Whedon and his writers at Mutant Enemy of being homophobic because they killed a lesbian character. For their part, Mutant Enemy seems to be encouraging this perception by repeatedly insisting that Tara's death wasn't motivated by homophobia. But most Buffy fans who are angry with Mutant Enemy aren't accusing them of being homophobic at all. A group of homophobic writers and producers could never have given the world the Willow/Tara relationship in the first place, and there's no reason to assume that they have all suddenly turned homophobic now.
On the other hand, even if Mutant Enemy didn't intend to tell a homophobic story, they were still capable of placing a homophobic image on the screen. Images have cultural and historical significance that go beyond the confines of a story. The swastika, for example, is an ancient symbol of good luck, but in the 21st Century it's almost universally associated with Nazism and Adolf Hitler. Similarly, the images of Tara lying dead and Willow going on a destructive and murderous rampage conjure images of the many dead and evil lesbian characters that have appeared on American TV and movie screens before. For Mutant Enemy to have placed these images on the screen and not expected viewers to hearken back to the homophobic stories of the past is as naïve as if they had placed a swastika on the screen and expected the viewers to think it signified good luck.
In a May 15 interview on the internet radio program, "The Succubus Club," Buffy producer David Fury admitted that the way Tara's death was depicted, with her being shot inside the bedroom where she and Willow had been making love for most of the episode, was a mistake:
"In retrospect, I can see the cliché. That was not our intent. We wanted to show them together and happy. We dramatized them being back together, it created the impression in a lot of people's minds that the event of her death was linked to them having sex. I do understand it. I say, 'Oh yeah.' It was not intended. We make mistakes."
So Mutant Enemy and the fans seem to agree that what appeared on the screen was harmful. Yet Mutant Enemy still maintains that their intentions were pure, even if the results were not.
The death of Tara as "dramatically necessary"
The official explanation Mutant Enemy gives for Tara's death is that was "dramatically necessary." In all the interviews with the Mutant Enemy staff since "Seeing Red" was aired, it has almost the only answer that any of them will give, even when asked questions that are only peripherally related to Tara's death. Willow's storyline of descending into the grip of dark magic to the point where she became an enemy of Buffy and her friends was a primary goal of the seasonal storyline, so the Mutant Enemy argument goes, and Tara's death was necessary to bring that storyline to fruition. Therefore, Tara had to die.
But is that true? Claiming that Tara's death was a necessity implies that there was no other way to bring about the ultimate goal of the storyline - Willow's emergence as an enemy, filled with dark magic to use against Buffy. Was this really the case?
Many Buffy fans think otherwise. They point to the first nine episodes of the season, in which Willow was depicted as becoming increasingly dependent on her growing magical abilities, and she was using them to make life simpler for herself. When she had a fight with Tara, she cast a spell to make Tara forget the fight. When Willow and Tara went to the Bronze looking for Buffy's sister Dawn, she wanted to project everyone but Dawn into a parallel universe in order to make the search easier. The temptations of the power she wielded were luring Willow into increasingly darker parts of her personality. If this storyline had been allowed to continue, Willow could easily have ended up as a villain all by herself. It wouldn't have been necessary for Tara to die, or even for Tara to be present at all.
So why didn't this storyline take place? Because in the tenth episode of the season, "Wrecked," Willow's problem suddenly changed. Instead of using magic to impose her will or make her life easier, Willow began using magic to get high. What had been a story about the temptations of power became a story about addiction and recovery, despite the fact that there had never been any drug addiction symbolism used prior to "Wrecked." Willow went through a long recovery process, during which time Buffy had to take away Willow's "magic weed" and get rid of all the candles in the house, because "to witches, candles are like bongs."
By the time "Seeing Red" came along, Willow was close to a full recovery. Since she was largely magic-free, of course it required something cataclysmic like Tara's death to send her back into dark magic. But the "necessity" of killing Tara in "Seeing Red" was brought about by the choice to change the nature of Willow's problem in "Wrecked."
So was it a better storyline to have Willow go through addiction and recovery before descending into dark magic rather than progressing there through the temptations of power? The widespread condemnation of the addiction and recovery story by fans and critics alike would suggest that it wasn't. But that's not really the point. Regardless of whether the "temptations of power" story or the "addiction and recovery" story was better, the fact remains that there were two options (and perhaps more that aren't considered here). Having more than one option means that there were no "dramatic necessities," only "dramatic choices." Tara didn't die because "she needed to." She died because Joss Whedon chose to kill her.
Joss says "I killed Tara"
Interviews haven't yielded much information about the decision process that led to Tara's death, since everyone from Mutant Enemy has stuck to the official position that Tara's death was a "necessity." There was, however, one telling piece of information from a post Joss Whedon made at the Bronze Posting Board shortly after the season finale:
"I knew some people would be angry with me for destroying the only gay couple on the show, but the idea that I COULDN'T kill Tara because she was gay is as offensive to me as the idea that I DID kill her because she was gay."
Who is Joss referring to when he mentions "some people?" I can't really see any executives from UPN or Fox sending him orders to keep a gay couple intact. If he's referring to any of his writers, none have spoken up and said so, and I highly doubt they ever will. That leaves only one group - the audience.
What exactly was Joss Whedon's relationship with the audience during the course of the Willow/Tara relationship? From all appearances, it was very good. Joss seemed to be pleased with the fact that he had created a symbol of hope and encouragement for gay and questioning young people. In May 2000, he wrote:
"...one post from a gay or questioning teen saying the show helped them is worth six hundred hate letters."
In the August 2001 issue of Out magazine, he is quoted as saying:
"We do have a bunch of people saying we've changed their lives. I always want to put out good role models. But I wasn't there saying, 'I want to help gay teenagers be comfortable with themselves.' We talked about the idea of college as being a place where people expand their sexuality or discover their sexuality. Then Seth Green decided he didn't want to do the show anymore. That's when [Willow's sexuality] blossomed into full womanhood. To get these responses was wonderfully overwhelming. It turned out to be one of the most important things we've done on the show."
Meanwhile, for the entire duration of the Willow/Tara storyline, Joss was having praise and gifts heaped on him by the fans, and Buffy was being nominated for awards because of the way Willow and Tara were being portrayed. It appeared to be a situation that was pleasing and beneficial to Mutant Enemy and the viewers alike.
So what happened? If Joss was enjoying the positive response and good relationship with his fans, and if he felt the Willow/Tara relationship was "one of the most important things" they had done on Buffy, why did he turn around and destroy it so wantonly?
Two sentences in the above quotes point toward a likely answer. First, note that in the Out interview, Joss says, "I wasn't there saying, 'I want to help gay teenagers be comfortable with themselves.'" Second, note that in his post at the Bronze following the finale, he said, "the idea that I COULDN'T kill Tara because she was gay is as offensive to me as the idea that I DID kill her because she was gay." In both instances, Joss places himself and what he does or doesn't want to do at the center of the issue. He accepts the praise and gratitude for what Willow and Tara did for people, but insists that he never set out to do any of it. He states that he killed Tara knowing full well that people would object to it.
In a sense, the two quotes complement each other. The Out interview can be taken as an attempt to provide himself cover for what he knows is to come. By saying he never intended to make Willow and Tara role models, he gave himself an excuse for the time when he was to take those role models away. Effectively, what Joss is saying in these two quotes is, "I gave you Willow and Tara because that's what I wanted in my story, and now I'm taking them away because that's what I want in my story." His story is always what's most important. He places his own creative freedom at the center of everything, elevating it above any social benefits the Willow/Tara relationship produced and above any harmful effects ending the Willow/Tara relationship causes.
Creative Freedom and Responsibility
But isn't that the way Joss is supposed to think? He's a writer, after all, and an executive producer. He's an American citizen, and that means he's guaranteed freedom of speech. But all freedom comes with responsibility attached to it. In the case of a TV show, the writers and producers hold power over their audience, because they control the story that the audience sees and hears. The amount of freedom they have to exert that control, therefore, is tempered by the responsibility they have toward the audience over whom they have power.
The balancing act between freedom and responsibility manifests itself in three ways. First, writers and producers are responsible for the messages they craft in the story itself. Second, writers and producers are responsible for the consequences that result once the story has been told. Lastly, writers and producers are responsible for the way they conduct themselves when interacting with their audience. All three areas have boundaries, of course. Responsibility can only extend so far. But where those boundaries lie is something that can't really be generalized. Each story must be examined individually. In the story of Willow and Tara, the case can be made that in all three areas, Mutant Enemy was willing to accept the responsibility of handling the storyline for as long as it suited them, but has tried to deny that responsibility now that the storyline doesn't suit them any more.
Responsibility for telling the story
Mutant Enemy claims that telling the story is of paramount importance, and no other considerations can get in the way of telling whatever story they want. And yet there are numerous times when Mutant Enemy made a deliberate effort to play up the Willow/Tara relationship in ways that had never been done for a gay couple on TV before. In a September 5 2001 interview with The Onion, Joss Whedon ridiculed the series Thirtysomething in order to defend the way Buffy was depicting the physical aspects of the Willow/Tara relationship:
"If it's not sexy, then it's not worth it. Like those two guys in Thirtysomething sitting in bed together, looking like they were individually wrapped in plastic. They did a scene with two guys in bed, and it was a big deal, on Thirtysomething, and it was the most antiseptic thing I've ever seen in my life. They were sitting ramrod-straight, far away from each other, and not even looking at each other. I was like, 'Ahhh, sexy!'"
In other interviews and on the Bronze Posting Board, Joss talked about the objections the WB executives had to the Willow/Tara kiss in the episode, "The Body." He boasted that he had threatened to walk out if the WB didn't let him keep the kiss in the episode. More recently, Marti Noxon gave several interviews in which she boasted about how Buffy was pushing the frontiers of what they could show on TV in the way of physical affection between the two girls. She spoke excitedly about Mutant Enemy's plan to show a "naked sex scene," just like the scenes all the heterosexual couples on the show had done.
In the wake of Tara's death, however, Mutant Enemy has denied that they had any responsibility to preserve the Willow/Tara relationship and its storyline. They claim that the needs of the story tied their hands, and they had no choice but to kill Tara. As long as Willow and Tara served their own interests, Mutant Enemy was willing to promote the storyline and play the part of responsible storytellers - but once their own interests went elsewhere, so did their sense of responsibility.
An interesting footnote to this issue came on June 18, when Mutant Enemy gave a presentation for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Joss Whedon informed the crowd that in the upcoming season, Buffy would no longer be working at the "Doublemeat Palace," a fast food restaurant where she had been working during the previous season. The reason for the change? The fast food industry didn't like the way it was being portrayed at the Doublemeat Palace and threatened to pull its advertising money. Apparently Mutant Enemy feels their story is too important for them to listen to the gay community, but not too important for them to listen to Ronald McDonald.
Responsibility for the consequences of the story
When it comes to taking responsibility for the consequences of their story, Mutant Enemy again goes only as far as their self-interest takes them. When Mutant Enemy was interested in telling the story of Willow and Tara, Joss Whedon proudly proclaimed, "one post from a gay or questioning teen saying the show helped them is worth six hundred hate letters." In the wake of Tara's death, the Mutant Enemy response is reflected in the following excerpt from writer Steven DeKnight's May 8 interview at The Succubus Club:
"Q: The other day I heard a despondent gay teenage girl, in desperate pain to begin with, say that Willow and Tara are the only bright light in her world. They give her hope for herself and her life... So please answer this question for her: How do you think that she will feel after witnessing the end of 'Seeing Red?' ... What do you think we should tell her about the ending of your show?
DeKnight: You can't really think about storylines in that way when you're trying to tell a big, grand, seasonal story. Anybody can die. Anybody can get it. Anybody can be destroyed or broken down, and it's whatever serves the story."
And so once again we see that Mutant Enemy gladly takes the credit for the good their story does in the world, but refuses to take the blame for the harm their story does in the world, choosing instead to duck behind the smoke screen they call "serving the story."
Responsibility for conduct when interacting with the audience
One element of this controversy that is almost always brought up by fans but is almost never addressed by Mutant Enemy is Mutant Enemy's conduct when talking to the audience about the story.
According to both Steven DeKnight and actress Amber Benson, who played Tara, Joss Whedon made the decision to kill Tara during the summer of 2001. This means that Mutant Enemy spent months giving interviews in which they took credit for a relationship that they knew they were going to destroy. Joss Whedon's Out interview, in which he called the Willow/Tara relationship, "one of the most important things we've done on the show," was most likely published after Joss had already decided to end the relationship. He may have even given the interview after he had decided to end the relationship. When Marti Noxon boasted about "pushing the frontiers" with a "naked sex scene," she was referring to "Seeing Red," the very episode in which Tara was killed. Again, we see that Mutant Enemy's self-interest came first, and that they had no problem with the hypocrisy of accepting praise for a storyline they knew they were about to undo.
In addition to the media interviews, several Mutant Enemy writers interact with the fans on a regular basis through the Bronze Posting Board. For weeks worried fans asked the writers whether or not Tara was going to be killed off, and for weeks the writers assured them that she wasn't. Steven DeKnight loudly proclaimed "OVER MY DEAD BODY!" once when asked if Tara was going to be killed off, even though he was the one who wrote the episode in which she was killed. In his Succubus Club interview, DeKnight justified himself in this way:
"Well you know, part of the thing at Mutant Enemy, since I do talk to the fans, is I kind of feel a semi-responsibility to throw up a little smoke now and then."
Again we see that Mutant Enemy's sense of responsibility is directed solely toward itself. Of course it's reasonable to assume that writers would want to conceal the details of their stories until the episodes are aired, but concealing the truth is not the same thing as actively lying. No one forces the Mutant Enemy writers to go online, and no one forces them to answer any specific question. To spread lies instead of simply remaining silent is irresponsible and disrespectful.
A better way of doing business
In his May 3 interview with E!Online, Joss Whedon said:
"...I need to give [the fans] what they need, not what they want."
But how can Joss give the fans "what they need" when he doesn't listen to what the fans are saying? For two years, Joss and his staff heard the praise of the gay community and heard about all the hurts and disappointments they had helped wipe away through the symbols of hope that Willow and Tara provided. Did they really think the gay community needed to have those hurts and disappointments put back on them again, even more forcefully than before? On the contrary, it would seem that what Joss is actually saying is that he needs to give the fans what he thinks they need, without his bothering to find out whether his opinions are accurate. Again, Mutant Enemy appears to accept responsibility only for themselves.
There's a better way of doing business than the way Mutant Enemy behaves. There's a way of giving people what they need that goes beyond egocentric opinions. It's the way of actually listening to the audience and to the world in general. It's the way of crafting a message that can transcend the simple medium of television and attempt to improve the lives of those who hear it. It's a way that novelist Madeleine L'Engle describes in her book, Walking On Water:
We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination."
And in the case of Willow and Tara, it's a way that could still have accomplished the stated goal of the seasonal story arc. If Joss had chosen to stay with his original story of Willow grappling with the temptations of power, Tara could have lived. And in fact, Tara could have been there to help Willow at the conclusion of the story, thus strengthening their relationship instead of destroying it. Joss could still have had the Dark Magic Willow storyline and the confrontation between Buffy and Willow while also doing the socially responsible thing by maintaining and building upon the relationship. Listening to the call of responsibility would therefore have cost Joss nothing - and yet he refused to listen.
Instead, what we see from Mutant Enemy is example after example of behavior that expresses little more than self-interest. Time after time, Mutant Enemy has appeared willing and eager to take credit for doing good but has refused to take responsibility for doing harm. Time after time, they have demonstrated hypocrisy and callous disregard for their viewers. They claim to produce what the viewers need, but it always appears to be more in line with what Mutant Enemy needs instead.
And so in conclusion, I come full-circle and return to my title. No, the killing of Tara was not an act of homophobia, but that doesn't make it right. Through proper handling of the Willow/Tara storyline, Joss Whedon could have attained greatness as a pioneer and visionary in modern society, but instead he traded that in for the imagined self-importance of his own ego - and we have all been diminished because of it.
Robert A. Black spent two seasons on the writing staff of Nickelodeon's You Can't Do That On Television back in the 1980s. After several years in the fields of Engineering and Quality Assurance, he is currently attempting a writing comeback as a Young Adult novelist.
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