So I was re-watching MASH.... holy sh**

[Ginger Tea]

I've probably got more hours of the movie under my belt than the show, so I have no point of reference to any one (like I said) so he knows weird shit goes down, this means he should be more aware of the possibilities, but he could have also just thought horny teenagers.

Not watching the episode I cant say if she appeared drunk to him or if he should even suspect she was 'altered' in any way out side of the supernatural.

Even if she came at him naked with witnesses saying "fuck me now" and she turned out to be drunk its not looking good for him if he acted on it.

[Andrew B]

Keep in mind that the organization didn't believe in magic, and just used demons as a catch-all term.

He only learned that magic was a thing in recently at that point in the series.

[Shangri-laschild]

I'm of the opinion that even if he definitely did rape her because she was clearly acting drunk, he still did not consent to sleep with the person he actually slept with. Which would mean they were both victims even if he was also her rapist.

[Anthony K. S.]

"Drunk" was really not how it came across to me.

When Faith (in Buffy's body) was with Riley, she was acting very seductive and sexually aggressive. Riley initially went along with it, but then told her to stop :

Riley : What are we playing in here?
Faith : I'm Buffy.
Riley : Okay. Then I'll be Riley.
Faith : Well, if you don't want to play -
Riley : That's right. I don't want to play. [Gently kisses her.]

It didn't look to me like Faith was acting drunk at all, or that Riley thought she was. Rather, he thought she was role-playing, and he ultimately decided that he really wanted to make love to her without the pretenses.

Keep in mind that the organization didn't believe in magic, and just used demons as a catch-all term. He only learned that magic was a thing in recently at that point in the series.

This is a good point.

Once we got past all of the mystery of the Initiative's introduction, it became clear that the Initiative was far less experienced and knowledgeable about the supernatural than Buffy and her friends.

There was a scene in the episode "Doomed" that starkly illustrated the difference. Buffy and the Initiative were both hunting the same demon. This scene cut back and forth between (1) Buffy and her friends researching the demon and (2) Riley briefing his team about the "hostile sub-terrestrial."

Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles were looking up the demon in old textbooks, reading cryptic verses describing it, and concluding that it was gathering ingredients to perform a ritual that would end the world (naturally). As they depart, Buffy says she'll check the magic shop for more information on the ritual's final ingredient, and instructs the others to check the library archives. They agree to get their weapons and meet up later.

Riley was listing off the creature's height, weight, special hazards (which were unknown, though Riley said it was likely nothing they hadn't handled before), and behavioral patterns. He also told his team about the creature's strong pheromone signature, and how the laboratory had developed a detection system which gave them a clear idea of its trail. As the briefing concludes, Riley gives his team instructions on clothing, weapons, search patterns, and plan of attack.

... It's no wonder, really, that Buffy implied at one point that the Initiative were amateurs, and that they should be following her lead.

The Initiative's technology, resources, and military-trained personnel seemed impressive at first, but it eventually became clear that they had no real understanding of the occult matters that they were dealing with.

So even if Riley had become aware of the existence of magical possession, I don't think it's really fair to say that he should have realized it was a possibility when it came to Faith being in Buffy's body.

Riley presumably did not even know that vampires and demons were real until he was recruited into the Initiative, and then spent a long time operating with a scientific, military mindset toward it all.

That being the case ... "Buffy's acting strangely ... Maybe she's possessed" was simply not an intuitive conclusion for Riley to draw in this situation. And even if he considered it, it would be difficult for me to say that Riley should have thought enough of the possibility to actually act on it.

So what did Riley think was going on?

I don't know.

Personally, if I hadn't known about the body-switching, it would have looked to me like Buffy had taken some time to think and reflect, possibly gotten some advice from her friends, resolved that "Riley isn't Parker" and decided that she was willing to take that step with Riley after all. Perhaps that was what Riley thought.

(It would also have been possible that Buffy had decided to sleep with Riley because she wanted to make him happy ... which, admittedly, doesn't make Riley look that good, either. The appropriate response in this situation would have been for Riley to tell Buffy that if she is going to take that step with him, it should be because she wants to, not because she believes that he does.)

Now, with all of that said ... Regardless of why Riley slept with Faith (who he believed was Buffy), the fact remains that Faith really did sexually assault Riley by having sex with him without his informed consent. Riley would not have consented had he known the truth.

Whether or not Riley should have realized that something was wrong with Buffy is irrelevant - Either way, what happened to Riley was not his fault, nor did he deserve to have it happen to him.

If a female character had been in Riley's place, it would never have been considered acceptable for the writers to depict her as being at fault in any way, no matter the circumstances under which it happened.

I don't think that anybody is disputing this. It seems to me that this storyline crossed the line with some viewers, not so much because of the "victim blaming" (although that certainly drew some criticism), but because the show essentially treated Riley's victimization as a non-issue.

I found a video on YouTube ("Ringer/Buffy : Unrecognized Male Rape via Disguise") that I think very neatly summarizes the issue.

(The first part of the video discusses Sarah Michelle Gellar's "Ringer" series. At about the 2:10 mark, the video begins exploring the "Buffy" storyline.)

The idea that Faith had sexually assaulted Riley was never even mentioned on the show. Instead, Faith sleeping with Riley was depicted as something terrible that Faith had done to Buffy - sleeping with Buffy's boyfriend - and that Riley was also partly to blame for it.

This video blogger argued that the primary reason for Buffy and Riley to be angry at Faith should have been her victimization of Riley, not the fact that she had violated the monogamy of Buffy and Riley's relationship.

She also went on to say that society is now recognizing that having sex with somebody in this manner, without their consent, is "fracked up," but that we still need to recognize that the double standard regarding women raping men (which is not taken as seriously, because men aren't viewed as being sexually vulnerable and women aren't perceived as being capable of being threats) is "also fracked up."

That was the real issue - not Riley's failure to recognize that something was wrong with Buffy, but the show's failure to recognize that Riley had even been victimized at all.

I remember looking at a blog, written by a female fan of the show, sharply criticizing that storyline for "trivializing the experiences of rape victims" - for all of the aforementioned reasons, the show's treatment of Riley's victimization as a non-issue.

As I was reading it, it seemed to me that she was practically daring her readers to try to suggest that the fact that the victim was male and the attacker was female somehow makes it "different."

Nobody did.

[Ginger Tea]

Oh he came from a totally different group altogether, I was wondering why Giles etc didn't believe in the supernatural (out side of vampires) as supernatural when they dealt with it daily.

I was at work for most of the episodes and not inclined to tape it and the box set I bought 2 years ago is still shrink wrapped.

[Hyena Dandy]

with Riley, it was more a case of "didn't he realize something weird was going on?" considering that Buffy had been fairly emphatic about not having sex for a while- including earlier that same day- then suddenly, it appears that Buffy is all but throwing herself at him,a dn so he has sex with her. Such a dramatic change should probably make him suspect SOMETHING was going on.

That still is placing the onus on the victim. It makes it a little foolish of him, but he was pretty consistently portrayed as a guy who was fairly naive about the supernatural. And it's not like Buffy was obviously impaired, she was just acting differently than she had. If someone I was dating had been adamant about not having sex, and then one day came up and was basically throwing themselves at me, I'd be surprised, sure. And probably protest just a bit to make sure they REALLY wanted it, and if they assured me yes, they want it, then I'd have gone on with that.

Consistently, characters in Buffy (And Star Trek, and other shows where this can happen) don't react to out of character behavior with "I bet you're under mind control!" even when that's something they have seen is possible. So expecting him to in this case is expecting someone to go beyond what even experienced people do in their universe, and that's something he is not.

This is a case of Buffy failing with one of the things it's often done best and worst, which is portraying real life situations through metaphor involving the supernatural. The problem is that in this one, their metaphor fell apart. It's played as if Riley had been seduced. Faith violated their monogamy, and Riley was tempted by someone who was aggressively out to hurt someone. The manner in which they were tempted changed the context, so that Riley was at even less fault than he could have been. Because while psychological, that's still a "Why didn't you suspect your girlfriend had had her body switched with her former friend?" is still a "Why didn't you defend yourself from your rapist?" Type of question.

That was hardly the only time the 'But there's magic...' aspect seriously effected the way episodes could be read. I'm thinking of the Hyena episode from season one, as well. >_>

although, that doesn't explain why the character wasn't simply recast with a different actress.

The network (and test audiences) had hated both the Number One character, and the Mr. Spock character, and was told he'd have to drop one of those. So, to quote Barrett-Roddenberry, "He kept the Vulcan and married the woman, because he didn't think Leonard would have it the other way around."

He felt that showing humanity at peace with alien species was important to his vision, so he took out the Number One character, made Spock the first officer, and added another female bridge officer, to keep showing that women were integrated into the crews at high levels.

[Jester]

Okay, so I'm late to the conversationa--what else is new?--but I'm surprised that, when Values Dissonance was brought up, no one mentioned what I thought was one of the most obvious examples of that from my lifetimes. To wit, how the majority of teen romance movies from the 80s were basically stalker movies. Guy likes girl, guy goes after girl, girl rebuffs guy, guy keeps going until girl gives in. Classic stalker mentality...NOW. Back then, it was often viewed, by both the filmmakers and the audience, as romantic.

"Say Anything" is a classic of the genre, and a classic movie, period. But take the movie's most iconic moment: Lloyd standing outside Diane's window with the boom box over his head blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." Most people I know who've watched that movie were emotionally affected by that scene. I certainly was. But if some guy did that in today's world in real life, almost certainly the girl in question or her father would have called the cops, and at best, the guy would be warned by the cops to stay away from the girl, at worst, he would have been slapped with a restraining order and/or arrested and/or charged with stalking. Even if such a thing were portrayed in a movie today, people would still say it was tantamount to stalking, and there would be an outcry.

But even with all that said, that doesn't make "Say Anything" any less a classic. Though I dare say that 20-30 years from now, audiences will view it with as much distaste as we view some movies from the 60s now that were perfectly acceptable socially at the time.

[TheHuckster]

I don't think we've really gone far past the stalker trope in movies, to be honest. In fact, I'd even argue that they've been replaced with even worse plot lines, like Twilight, which I thought had a horrible message for young minds.

[KabeRinnaul]

I don't think we've really gone far past the stalker trope in movies, to be honest. In fact, I'd even argue that they've been replaced with even worse plot lines, like Twilight, which I thought had a horrible message for young minds.

I keep thinking that, were I to look for it, I'd be sure to find that some has, completely oblivious to any implications, made a YouTube music video putting Twilight together with Every Breath You Take.

[wolfie]

To wit, how the majority of teen romance movies from the 80s were basically stalker movies. Guy likes girl, guy goes after girl, girl rebuffs guy, guy keeps going until girl gives in. Classic stalker mentality...NOW. Back then, it was often viewed, by both the filmmakers and the audience, as romantic.

Did you watch the classic Warner Brothers cartoons when you were a kid? By today's standards, nobody would make films intended for kids where the lead character (Pepe Le Pew) was a stalker.

[Jester]

I don't think we've really gone far past the stalker trope in movies, to be honest. In fact, I'd even argue that they've been replaced with even worse plot lines, like Twilight, which I thought had a horrible message for young minds.

Can't really comment on Twilight, as my few remaining brain cells refused to allow me to watch any of those reeking piles of garbage. But the number of horrible messages that series gave was impressive, not least of which "write horribly and make a lot of money."

Did you watch the classic Warner Brothers cartoons when you were a kid? By today's standards, nobody would make films intended for kids where the lead character (Pepe Le Pew) was a stalker.

The old WB cartoons were downright subversive. There was a lot of subtle commentary going on in them, and sometimes it wasn't even all that subtle. Hell, even some of the more recent WB stuff, like Animaniacs, had stuff that would go right over the kids' heads.

[gremcint]

dude those are still in syndication.

[Andara Bledin]

Can't really comment on Twilight, as my few remaining brain cells refused to allow me to watch any of those reeking piles of garbage.

Everything I have ever read that deals with that trash is that it's a wish-fulfillment training manual on how to be an abused spouse.

Just googling "twilight" plus "domestic abuse" gets you more evidence than you'd ever need to understand just how fucked up those books are.

It makes me wonder how many of the adult fans are abused women using the stories to try to normalize their own abusive relationships.

[Jester]

I will say one good thing about Twilight.

No, really.

As many successful movies or movie franchises do, it spawned a parody. In this case, the parody was called "Vampires Suck." Which covered the plots of the first two installments of "Twilight," (I'll explain how I know this below,) And it was BRILLLIANT! Not only did they totally nail the ridiculousness of the franchise, it also featured an actress that absolutely was spot on with her impressions of Kristen Stewart's mannerisms. And it was freaking hilarious!

So, the obvious question is, if I've never seen any of the Twilisht movies, how do I know that Vampires Suck mirrors the plots of the first two Twilight movies? Well, after having watched VS, I thought, "The source material could not possibly be this fucking stupid." So I googled it. And found out that, yes, the plots of the first two Twiligt movies are, in fact, that fucking stupid.

So find Vampires Suck and watch it. Because it's fucking hilarious. And far more worthy of your time than fucking Twilight.

[TheHuckster]

it also featured an actress that absolutely was spot on with her impressions of Kristen Stewart's mannerisms. And it was freaking hilarious!

You can find a shoelace that can do a great impression of Kristen Stewart.

Really, all you have to do is blindfold any old person, hep her up with tranquilizers (or maybe keep them from sleeping for over 20 hours) take her to the set, remove the blindfold and then call "ACTION!" and you'll have an instant Kristen Stewart double. The confusion over where she is, and why she feels so drowsy will accomplish the effect just as well.

I'll have to see Vampires Suck at some point, although I dismissed it when it was out thinking it was another one of the dozens of "Scary Movie" clones that just weren't good.