Why The Vampire Diaries’ Treatment of Bonnie Bennett–And Her Fans–Bites
Bonnie is continuously handed the short end of the stick–I was actually impressed that the show allowed a character, Caroline, to point that out a few episodes ago and allowed her to stay angry with Elena for two whole weeks!– and her character development is nil compared to the other main characters. He shows a complete lack of understanding that the dismissal of Bonnie’s character likely doesn’t spring from her white Jewish background, and that ignoring that is just putting on blinders to the realities of the Black Best Friend and Magical Negro tropes. Most importantly, with these comments Davis sends the message that certain fans–myself included–don’t matter in his world view because only Black fans care about Bonnie.
As for Plec? Well, she calls Bonnie “strong and beautiful” in her Twitter statement. My question for her then is, if she’s such a strong character then why does she continually need other people to speak for her? Caroline is the one to continually express to Elena how angry Bonnie is with her. We find out, through lazy exposition, that Bonnie’s mother is going through her transition to becoming a vampire while neither of them actually appear in the episode. Characters are forever delivering messages for Bonnie rather than letting her speak for herself. Even if Plec’s issues with Bonnie aren’t racially related, it’s time for her to finally admit that she does not like Bonnie Bennett’s character.
The boycott that was called for was ultimately a dud (ratings for the episode fell within the average, with 2.44 million viewers). Calling for a boycott amongst internet fandom is never, I think, the correct solution to a problem, especially a problem dealing with race. Because Internet fandom is so present and so vocal, it’s often easy forget that of the 2-3 million people who watch the show each week we make up an incredibly small percentage.
Most TVD watchers are like my friends: viewers who genuinely enjoy the plot and would never miss an episode but who don’t spend much time thinking about the show once it’s over for the week. They’re not writing fanfiction, making gifs, or following Julie Plec’s every word on Twitter. The other part of the equation of course is that, even being as vocal as we are, Internet fandom is not comprised of one hive mind and as countless examples have shown us (most recently The Hunger Games), we certainly do not always agree on issues of race. A campaign to save a show, a la Community, is massively different and easier to mount than making people understand just how wrong Davis was and why Plec’s attitude is problematic, and I worry that seeing someone try to mount this protest and then watching it sputter only helps to bolster their views.
Jordan: Oh, Twitter battles. SMH. You think of a “clever” response in the heat of the moment, hit send, and then it lasts forever with the added bonus of being infinitely sharable. Someone, please remind of this remark if I am ever getting into a heated discussion with any of you guys so I can take a second to remember myself, make sure I’m not being an ass, think about it again, and then send an individual email. As someone who puts my thoughts on the Internet, I feel bad when people get caught up in things they would probably think better of if they just took a second to think. But they didn’t, so here we are …
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