The Vampire Diaries and Consent

Despite a few exceptional moments, The Vampire Diaries has been fairly disappointing lately. The main bright spot in the last few episodes has been the Christmas ep, when Klaus killed all the hybrids. That was way cool. On the other hand, Caroline is a total jerk, the show still hasn’t resolved any of its race issues (Seriously, how long do we think Bonnie’s dad is going to last? He’s black AND a parental figure—I’m pretty sure he’s doomed.), Stefan’s acting like a spoiled child, and the show is incredibly over-reliant on the idea of compulsion.

If The Vampire Diaries wasn’t such an awesome show, I wouldn’t feel the need to criticize it so heavily. But for several seasons now, it’s been one of the best shows on tv, so when these problems keep cropping up, I can’t help but think that this show should be better than that.

The issue that I’m all up in arms over today is the show’s overuse of compulsion and its seeming lack of self-awareness when it comes to that subject.

In the TVD universe, vampires have the ability to compel—or hypnotize—humans into doing their bidding. They’ve used it in previous seasons to score an easy snack, easy sex, and to modify memories, just as a few examples. A couple of troubling instances from recent seasons include Elena having Jeremy’s memory constantly modified, and Damon using Andie as a sex/chew toy. Both of these examples bring up issues of consent that I don’t think the show has adequately dealt with.

Before Jeremy became a hunter, Elena had his memory modified several times to “save” him from particularly painful memories. In my mind, the show always presented this as an altruistic gesture from Elena, even though Jeremy was never asked if he even wanted these memories removed.

With the Damon/Andie example, I think his compulsion of her was clearly presented as morally wrong, yet none of the other characters ever confronted him about it. Even Elena, who is so concerned with the idea of Damon being “good,” never seemed to be all that upset about it. Which is odd, since Damon tends to be blamed for everything on the show, including things that he isn’t responsible for. He is the Mystic Falls punching bag, and yet no one bothers to stand up for poor Andie.

Yet even as I’m here referring to Andie as a victim, the rules and effects of compulsion are presented very inconsistently on the show. Sometimes the compelled is mindless and happy to be doing the vampire’s bidding, while other times, the compelled person can grumble and disagree and beg for mercy before still doing what he/she is told. The same goes for the ridiculous idea of the “sire bond,” which seems to be very similar to the idea of compulsion in that a vampire must obey everything his/her sire says.

The new conflict this season on The Vampire Diaries is Elena’s newfound vampirism and all that entails. Elena is apparently “sire-bound” to Damon as the show’s big “fuck you” to Damon/Elena fans. Instead of allowing the couple’s relationship to develop on its own, it is apparently the result of a different kind of compulsion.  To his credit, once Damon finds this out, he immediately tries to do right by Elena, albeit taking away her consent in a completely different way—by ordering her to stay away from him. Elena doesn’t get a choice either way.

Another problem is that no one seems to take Elena’s feelings seriously, even though Tyler was very specific that the sire bond only affects your actions, not your feelings and emotions. Elena tells Damon over and over that she loves and wants him, yet no one believes her. In fact, Stefan seems to be living in a permanent state of denial, and only becomes more determined to find the cure for vampirism.

Now that I mention it, can we take a moment to talk about how ridiculous this whole Race for the Cure (yeah, I went there) storyline is??

As soon as Elena became a vampire, everyone freaked out about how she’s not “supposed” to be a vampire. Um, what does that even mean? She is a vampire now. Why is Elena so special that everyone feels the need to save her from this horrible fate? No one threw a fit when Caroline became a vampire!

Anyway, so now that Elena’s a vampire, of course there might be a cure, and our boys will stop at nothing until they find it. And the sire bond just gives Stefan yet another reason to be obsessed with the search—if she’s cured, the sire bond will be broken, and Elena can finally make a choice, even though… she already did? Seriously, this show needs to make up its damn mind as to whether or not the sire bond/ compulsion affects people’s feelings. 

All of these are really interesting issues. The problem is, as much as I love it, I’m not sure the show is sophisticated enough to answer these questions. I get the feeling that, even if the writers recognize these issues of consent that they’re raising, we might not get any satisfying resolutions. And in an era where consent is already such a muddy issue in our culture and legal system, that could present a real problem.

Amy's Choice

Okay, this blog is (probably) not going to be all Doctor Who all the time, but it is my favorite show, and many of these episodes have really interesting elements to them that, being obsessive, I can’t just ignore.

So I just finished watching the newest episode “Amy’s Choice,” and I currently have a lot of half-formed ideas and opinions that I will now foist upon the world—some of which may come into play later on in the season.

As a whole, the episode was really good—miles better than “Vampires of Venice.” The monsters were cool, the conclusion was really emotional and dramatic, and it proved what we’ve all known for some time: old people are terrifying.

I had high hopes for the episode from just the title. “Amy’s Choice” led me to think that Amy would be getting back some of the agency that she lost last week, and it worked out that way, to an extent. In the episode, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are confronted with two dangerous situations in two different realities—one of which they are told is a dream and one of which is the real universe—and it becomes Amy’s job to choose which one is which. The reason for this is not entirely clear. The episode’s villain of the week, the “Dream Lord” claims that it’s because the Doctor and Rory are “Amy’s men,” and will abide by whatever she chooses. Upon reflection, maybe it’s more because the reality of the TARDIS flying into the cold star is clearly the Doctor’s world while the reality of the tiny village and pregnant Amy is clearly Rory’s world, and Amy is the one stuck in the middle of the two?

Anyway, so Amy finally chooses, but only after Rory dies in the tiny village reality and she decides that she doesn’t want to live without him. Although, if the Doctor had been the one to die in the tiny village reality, I feel like Amy would have done the same thing. Basically after anyone died in either reality, I would expect the other two to follow suit, and prove that the other reality was the real one, so the tension was sort of gone after that moment. I'm no television writer, but I think I would rather that Amy were forced to choose without Rory dying. The choice was too easy whether she was in love with him or not, especially since Amy didn’t seem too keen on Rory’s reality anyway, and only pretended to like it because she didn't want to hurt Rory's feelings. I wish she could have confronted Rory about what she really wanted—because it’s possibly to love Rory and yet not necessarily want to live an ultra-quiet life staying home and nine months pregnant and cooking and living with a husband who makes such unfortunate hairstyle choices. Wanting Rory and a life of adventure don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Then there’s the Doctor. I started the season very ambivalent about him, but since then, I’ve started to see real differences between him and David Tennant. In “Flesh and Stone,” particularly, he showed a very tender side with Amy. In “Vampires of Venice,” though, he denied Amy’s agency by insisting that Amy loved Rory. Now, "Amy's Choice" has the Doctor competing with Rory for Amy’s affections in a way sort of reminiscent of Mickey and Nine, but in a more annoying way, especially in light of last week. There is a wonderful moment, though, when Amy decides to kill herself in Rory’s reality, and the Doctor completely accepts her decision and calmly, trustingly, gets in the car beside her.

In this ep, though, it seems that the Doctor has mostly lost his mojo. He just doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. And maybe it’s his youth (visually speaking), but Amy and Rory, as companions, seem to have very little respect for him, which is, on one hand, good that they’re not treating him like an all-powerful god who’s so much better than them, but also a bit disturbing. Furthermore, we find out that the Dream Lord was actually the Doctor’s dark side made manifest (or something), which is a cool idea, but, judging from the dialogue in most of the scenes with hero and villain together, it seems that this Doctor is somehow very, very self-conscious. Actually more than that: he's self-loathing. And again, while I don’t want him cocky, I also don’t want him always doubting himself. It just doesn’t seem very “Doctor-ish” to me.