…
STELENA FTW!
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
But truly, this isn’t a Stefan
versus Damon, Stelena versus Delena piece, this is about how while I tune in to
the show every week and have been for the past 3 years, there are fundamental
issues with TVD and they’re beginning to more than irk me.
Let’s
start with the witch, Bonnie Bennett.
TVD
has been running for four seasons now so the pattern concerning witches is well
established: they have all been Black. The only exception to this pattern is
Esther, the “Original Witch” who created vampires, and even she learned her
craft from the Black witch who serves her family i.e. a woman enslaved to the
family (The Vampire Diaries also glosses over enslavement while feeling
self-satisfied with its subtle hints toward its presence in American history).
I bring this up because most characters of colour have died on The Vampire
Diaries – Anna, Connor, Luka and his father, Pearl, Bree – and if they haven’t
died, they are there to serve the purpose of either helping or destroying the
predominately white vampires. Nothing else.
Bonnie
is the only character-of-colour who is in the forefront and even she is an
incidental character. Indeed, she is integral in all of the supernatural
creatures’ plots to either save Elena or themselves but she is not a character
beyond her witchiness. They do not show her for anything else. She is there to be used for her powers
and nothing else and when she is so traumatized by an event that she can’t use
them anymore, she’s told that she is not valuable (“The witch who has lost her
powers is left out of the important conversations”). It can be said that Bonnie’s character revolves around
loyalty to her family, to her friends, and to, in a sense, morality and yet the
only way she’s given to express that is through her magic. Caroline, Elena,
Rebekah and Katherine are all given complexities and arcs that make them fuller
characters. Caroline went from a neurotic, deeply insecure and seemingly
shallow teenage girl to a fierce, loyal, mature and grounded vampire woman;
Elena, driven by compassion and empathy is not a saint, she is selfish a lot of
the time and victimizes herself to an irritating degree; conversely, Katherine
who appears to be purely selfish and cold-hearted is also driven by love and
loyalty; and finally, Rebekah, also deeply insecure, lonely, desperate and
loyal channels her frustration through intense-vampire-bullying. Bonnie,
however, lacks any of these interesting dynamics. It is not that she is a witch
first, she’s a witch only; she is the contemporary Magical Negro there to serve
at the pleasure of those around her. Magic is her only identity and she is the
least protected character in the entire show – most characters have lost at
least one family member throughout the course of the series – but Bonnie
sacrifices, she and her family are the collateral damage 99 times out of 100
and she isn’t given the support of her friends.
This
sort of segues into my next issue with The Vampire Diaries, which truthfully
hasn’t been brewing as long as my Bonnie Bennett problem. As I mentioned
earlier, The Vampire Diaries prides itself on giving its characters interesting
dynamics so as to avoid creating stock characters (with the exception of
Bonnie) and that is especially true for the two leading men: Stefan and Damon
Salvatore. I will be focusing on Damon and particularly his relationship with
Caroline.
Damon
comes into the series as basically a psychopath who takes advantage of insecure
girls, feeds on them, sleeps with them, compels them (erases their memory) and
repeats – Caroline being his most prominent victim. He also kills civilians to prove a point to his righteous,
straight-laced little brother, Stefan, and tries to tempt Stefan’s girlfriend,
Elena, into cheating on Stefan with him. Further, he tried to kill Caroline by
draining her blood (Stefan saw to it that that didn’t happen) and he also tries
to kill Bonnie and, again, Stefan saves her life. It’s then revealed that Damon is pathologically lonely,
fiercely in love with a woman (Katherine) who has led him on for over a
century, ridden with suppressed guilt for the pain he has caused, and actually
falls completely in love with Elena as she is someone who saw good in him and
took a chance on him.
As the seasons progress, he
becomes less and less psychopathic (even though his promiscuous and homicidal
tendencies appear every once in a while) and allows his caring nature to shine
through, mostly with Elena and with his brother, although with secondary
characters too, such as with Caroline’s mother, Sheriff Forbes. In this season,
Damon appears to be completely reformed and as a vampire, Elena has transformed
into a different, more impulsive, “darker” woman. The two are finally together
– yay for Delena fans, ehh for Stelena fans. However, Caroline reserves
judgment on their relationship and takes jabs at Damon every chance she gets,
which culminates into Elena vehemently defending Damon and paying no attention
to his track record, criticizing Caroline for falling into bed with him in an
instant and then ends with Caroline apologizing for her judgment.
Um,
WHY SHOULD CAROLINE APOLOGIZE? The notion astounds me.
Indeed,
Damon has changed. Elena and Stefan have both directly and indirectly turned
him into a better man. However, the present doesn’t outweigh or erase the past.
When Caroline transitioned into a vampire in season 2, all of her erased
memories came back, which included Damon’s murder attempt and his emotional and
physical abuse. While the show doesn’t directly acknowledge how Caroline feels
about these memories or shows any real hostility in the Caroline/Damon
relationship, Caroline is incredibly wary of Damon’s character and constantly
pushes Elena to stay with Stefan who, does have a very bloody past, but who
meaningfully atones for his past crimes and who has never tried to kill any of
Elena’s friends. Caroline’s mistrust of Damon is well-founded and yet the show
doesn’t appear to think so and constantly tries to counter her doubts so as to
show Damon as a truly honorable person while forgetting or trying to make the
audience forget that she has experienced a serious trauma with this person. It
ventures into the Stephanie Meyer land of irresponsibility and is more than
irritating and astounding.
Alas,
I think I will end my post because if I go any further it will become a piece
about how and why Stefan is better for Elena than Damon and that is not why I
sat down and wrote this this afternoon. I am not completely writing-off The
Vampire Diaries, it is a show I am completely obsessed with (probably a bit
unhealthily so) but that isn’t to say that it’s not without some deep-rooted,
real issues because it is, and they need to be acknowledged.
