(no subject)

[frelling_tralk]

Rather random entry heh, but something on tumblr recently made me wonder what everyone else's view of Joyce on Buffy was? I always felt like the writers thought that she was coming across as this really great mother and that she and Buffy were so close, but eh to me she always seemed to act like she was just waiting for Buffy to throw some more trouble in her path and that Buffy was such a chore to handle, but I'm not sure that was really justified? I.e telling Buffy not to get kicked out on her first day starting at a new school, or in an episode like Bad Eggs when she is constantly grounding Buffy and trying to catch her out, even without any conclusive proof that Buffy had done anything wrong. And in School Hard she apparently immediately swallowed every word that Synder said to her about Buffy (Joyce was acting very pissed and "in the car now" after his little talk with her) even though Buffy had been doing everything she could to help out at parents teacher night, as well as covering for Sheila's lack of participation at the same time, yet she clearly knew that Joyce wouldn't believe her if she explained that Synder was someone who just had it in for her

And it wasn't like Buffy was ever an openly defiant and hostile teenager, she was never rude and snapping at her mother from what I recall, yet Joyce seemed to constantly be on the alert before Buffy had even done anything wrong. I guess I felt like past events in LA had left Joyce stuck on a very unfair view of Buffy as this wayward teen who was constantly bringing drama into Joyce's life, even though we rarely saw much evidence of seasons 1 and 2 Buffy actually being that rebellious or out of control, even from Joyce's perspective of not knowing that Buffy was the slayer. At worst she caught Buffy fully dressed late at night in Bad Eggs and suspected her of sneaking out late (although she was actually just talking with Willow on the phone and dealing with her wayward egg heh). And c'mon, even if Buffy had been sneaking out to meet up with her friends, it's not like it's unknown for teenagers to do that occasionally! It would hardly made Buffy this nightmare teenager that's impossible to deal with, but you wouldn't know it from some of Joyce's reactions to what Buffy ~puts her through~

Buffy was hardly associating with gangs and giving the impression that she was about to go off the rails, for a start being best friends with the shy and studious Willow (whom Joyce certainly seemed to like) was pretty far removed from her life of hanging out with shallow popular kids in the Becoming flashback. Yet Joyce still often seemed to act like she was just waiting for Buffy to throw some trouble her way again? Not really the actions of a supportive mother who is committed to giving her daughter a second chance IMO

And this might be controversial, but I also thought that she expected too much of Buffy when she was sick. Buffy at barely 19 was in no way old enough to take care of a sick and mentally unstable Joyce in Listening To Fear, the doctors themselves said that she should be in the hospital under their care. I understand Joyce preferring to be in her own bed of course, but it was unfair to put Buffy in that position IMO, it really annoyed me when she immediately breathed a sigh of relief when the doctor's said that she could only go home if Buffy would agree to it. I felt like Joyce just piled everything on Buffy at that time because she knew that Buffy wouldn't say no, but then Listening To Fear ultimately resulted in Buffy completely breaking down and clearly unable to cope with Joyce's illness.

Nor should Joyce have left Buffy as the guardian of her 14/15 year old sister IMO. Joyce presumably knew that Hank was a dead loss as a guardian, but she must have had other relatives that she could have considered (Aunt Arlene gets brought up several times throughout the series?), or possibly even a friend that she could have asked? Hmm actually I don't know if Hank should automatically be considered out of the running either, yeah the show put him at more and more of a distance over the years, but he was never your typical total deadbeat Dad either. In Bargaining we're told that the Scoobies had been using the Buffybot to convince Hank that things are fine with Buffy and Dawn, so at the very least they must have suspected that he would have come back into the picture for Dawn otherwise? I mean idk, it was better for Dawn's sense of stability if she could remain with her sister of course, but was it really what was best for Buffy? Joyce kind of put her in an impossible position by asking her to promise to take care of Dawn and "love her like I love you", aka be Dawn's mother figure, even though Buffy was Dawn's sister and only separated by her in age by 5 years

Probably Buffy would have insisted on looking after Dawn anyway and doing her best for her, but then Joyce automatically asking Buffy to be the one to take care of Dawn didn't give her a lot of choice, and that did result in Buffy having to drop out of college in Tough Love and struggle to find the money to take care of them both in season 6 through working minimum wage jobs. Normally in other fictional stories of being brought up by siblings (like Party Of Five) they were muddling along as best they could only because the parents died unexpectedly with no plans in place for guardianship, but on Bts it did seem like Joyce's sole plan was to expect Buffy to step into her place as mother to Dawn? I'm not saying it's wrong even for Joyce to want Buffy and Dawn to stay together, but it's so strange to me that she didn't seem to have made any plans to put any other support network in place for Buffy, even though Buffy herself was barely out of high school and had been hoping to work towards a college degree at the time.

There didn't seem to be much middle ground between high school Buffy being treated by Joyce as this wayward kid who keeps bringing drama into her life, or later on as this old before her time adult who needed to sacrifice her own dreams for her little sister

Comments

[ruuger]

I've always thought that I was in the very small minority with my opinion that Joyce wasn't the amazing mother that a lot of peple make her out to be.

Granted, part of it is because the show is basically Buffy's POV and her mother is supposed to seem unreasonable (from a teenager perspective), but Joyce seems to be quite unfairly harsh towards Buffy. Especially since the 'official' explanation for Buffy's erratic behaviour was mental heath issues...

Nor should Joyce have left Buffy as the guardian of her 14/15 year old sister IMO.

I've never thought of that, but you're right. She didn't seem to make any kind of plans for the possibility that she might die. I mean, was there even a life insurance of any kind? Didn't all the hospital bills fall for Buffy to pay, or am I just remembering fanon? :D

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah I was just kind of thinking that, even though the show portrayed it as Joyce not fully understanding Buffy because of not being in know about her slayage and patrolling, even from Joyce's perspective was there really that much justification for her to treat Buffy as some kind of problem child? Buffy always seemed to be trying her hardest to not get her mother upset with her, so if anything she was a lot better behaved than the cliche of the teenager from hell flouncing from the room and whining at their parent, she was actually mostly pretty supportive of Joyce.

And all I remember is their talk in Listening To Fear (I think that was the episode, possibly it was Shadow?) of Joyce talking to Buffy about how she knows that Dawn is the Key, and asking Buffy to take care of Dawn of anything happens to Joyce. That seemed to be the extent of her plans? And it's explained in Flooded that Joyce's money had all been sucked up by hospital bills, so maybe she didn't realise that there wouldn't be any nest egg for Buffy to rely on? But even so, it was still expecting a lot for her 19 year old daughter to know how to cope with running a house and juggling bills, even if there had of been more money available.

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

I don't think writers ever intended to show Joyce as a great mother. They intended to show (and accomplished it brilliantly) parent from teenager's point of view.
You know, that stupid clueless adult that never gets that It Is The End of the World!
I don't think we ever see the real Joyce in the show, all we see is Buffy's perspective on her, and Buffy is exaggerating a lot, as all teenagers do.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I definitely get the feeling that we see Joyce from Buffy's perspective a lot of the time, and how it's frustrating how little her mother can understand, but I also got the sense that the shows view of Joyce was that she was a great parent and that Buffy was at an age where she couldn't fully appreciate how hard it was for Joyce having to deal with her as a single parent.

But when I started really thinking about those seasons when Joyce wasn't in the know of what Buffy was really getting up too, there still isn't all that much reason IMO to act so long-suffering about what trouble Buffy is going to get into next. We really don't get much indication of what she's so upset about, in Bad Eggs for example she basically just catches Buffy dressed in her room (not sneaking in or out), and then not being in the library when Joyce goes to the school. Of course the audience knows that Buffy was out slaying and couldn't tell Joyce exactly what she was doing, so from that perspective we are invited to sympathise with Buffy, but was there really any reason for Joyce to get so mad over Buffy not being in the library at the school, even without knowing about Buffy being a slayer? It's not like she caught her cutting school to go out shopping or something, she was still actually in the school building and trying to say that well yeah but there was a gas leak, but apparently that was enough for Joyce to completely cut her off and say that you're now confined to your bedroom indefinitely? It just didn't seem like the writing really backed up why Joyce was getting so frustrated with Buffy's behaviour

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, I never saw it like that. I mean, yes, obviously it was a Buffy-centric show, and we see how much Buffy's trying to juggle while Joyce doesn't. But it never occurred to me that the scenes we actually saw didn't happen that way.

I see Joyce's behavior as unreasonable and poorly-thought-through... but also believable. Some parents really aren't good at showing any care for their kids' emotional well-being, or cutting them any slack.

Likewise, Joyce being idealized after she died made total sense too -- people idealize those people (or communities) they've lost, it's part of expressing how huge the loss was. But the loss can be huge even if the person (or community) was imperfect.

[feliciacraft.livejournal.com]

Exactly. This is how I interpreted it. In fact, it's a trope--every "kid"-centric show have to have the parents out of the picture in order to have the kids take over and take charge. They never understand, they never believe, they never have time. Otherwise there's no story.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

I didn't like her. She appeared as the strict authority figure. Of course her reactions might have made some sense considering she didn't know what Buffy was actually doing (though your point is that even like that, her reactions were too harsh - I can't remember this precisely), but as part of the audience, I knew what Buffy was doing and I was a teenager, so Joyce wasn't a character I liked.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I always kind of watched it from Buffy's PoV definitely, but there was also always that sense that the writers wanted us to see Joyce as having every right to act so frustrated from her PoV as Buffy couldn't let her know what was really going on, but even so a lot her reactions seem to be unfairly coloured by what Buffy had got up too in LA. Not too dissimilar from both principals bringing up that Buffy burned down a school building at her old school, and Buffy being so pleasantly surprised in Teacher's Pet when a teacher said that he wasn't going to listen to what Principal Flutie was saying about her, but it seemed like Joyce had a similar attitude of never being able let it go that I hope we're not going to have your old issues coming up again

I can appreciate Joyce taking a hardline approach in LA to the Buffy that was apparently joining a gang, setting fire to buildings, and then getting expelled from school, but Sunnydale Buffy never gave Joyce any reason to distrust her as much as she did IMO, there really was every indication that Buffy was trying to turn over a new leaf and hang out with different kinds of people

[sabotabby]

I thought Joyce was doing the best she could, but she was a flawed person out of her depth. Which made her feel very human to me. I think she loved Buffy but didn't understand her. That was often played brilliantly for comedy ("have you tried not being a Slayer?") but speaks to some very real truths.

Don't forget that Buffy burned down her school and Joyce didn't know why for months, maybe longer. This doesn't exactly build trust.

Everything post-Joyce's death makes no sense and just seems engineered for gratuitous angst, though. Agreed 100% on that.

Anyway, I have kind of a similar relationship with my mom, in terms of her being this kind of ex-flower child who wanted to be her kid's friend but at the same time was terrified of my crossing the street and also had unreasonably high expectations of me, so I relate a lot.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

That's fair, and I can understand Joyce being on edge when they first moved to Sunnydale and she was waiting to see how Buffy would settle in there, but it just seemed like it was never really something that she dropped, even when Buffy seemed to be completely over whatever caused her to act up in her old school. If Buffy really had of got involved with ~bad kids~ and committed arson, as opposed to really being the slayer, I wonder how much Joyce's attitude would have hindered her from not going back to her old ways? Because it seemed like it was always something that Joyce was half-expecting to happen, even when Buffy was hanging out with geeky kids like Xander and Willow, not to mention Joyce discovering that Buffy was friendly with the school librarian in Angel. Doesn't exactly scream delinquent :P

[rahirah]

I dunno. I think Joyce tries really hard, but she's a flawed person. I think Buffy also tries really hard, but she too is a flawed person. I think they both loved each other, and they both hurt each other, and that's... pretty much par for the course with mothers and daughters.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

That's fair, I would definitely agree that Joyce and Buffy are portrayed as loving one another very much and being close, but Joyce's parenting just really bugged me at times because I got the sense that the show did endorse it, and wanted us to see her actions as being understandable because of not knowing the full supernatural truth. But even looking at it from an outside perspective of not knowing that Buffy is the slayer, I still don't get why Joyce had reason to act so distrustful of her, Buffy was so far from the cliched teenager from hell. (The show even kind of joked about that in Band Candy when the candy made all of the adults act like irresponsible idiots, but the actual teenagers on the show never act like that as Willow indignantly points out)

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

I sort of understood Joyce's stance on things in S1 and S2 given what happened in LA. It's S3 that she actually annoys me because she does know what's going on and her attitude never really changes.

Overall, though, I agree. I didn't hate her, she just wasn't given a great deal of motivation.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah I didn't hate her either, I guess it's more that I feel like the shows view of what consists of reasonable parenting was pretty skewed, it felt like she generally treated Buffy as way more of a burden than was called for. Even as late as season 5 she asks Buffy to babysit, and then berates Buffy for her sister coming across a dead body, hello it's not like Buffy planted the body there for Dawn to come across, get a grip!

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Honestly, my biggest issue with Joyce was that at the beginning, she felt like a bit of a contrived obstacle. "Buffy wants to fight. Buffy's mother catches her. Buffy's mother threatens to ground her." It got annoying and I'd always fast forward through those scenes because I get it, parents just don't understand.

As far as being suspicious of Buffy goes though, she DID burn down a gym, or so Joyce thought. And, if you go by the episode in S6 where Buffy thinks she's insane, she apparently was put in a mental hospital for thinking she was the Slayer. (Although this may not have been established at that point. I kind of don't think it was, or else a lot of conversations in S1-3 would've gone much differently.) Either way, I do think she had good reasons. It was just... all very contrived to me.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

It did feel like a pretty simplistic portrayal, I wonder if Joss would have handled it differently these days as adults tend to have their own storylines a lot more on today's teen shows, whereas Joyce never really got to be a fully rounded character until season 5

I think the mental issues were a retcon that were introduced in season 6 for the first time (possibly related to the monks rewriting everyone's memories?), Joyce certainly didn't act like she was concerned for Buffy's mental health in the early seasons...And while Buffy certainly had a dodgy background in LA, it seemed unfair for Joyce to continue holding that against her when she was more or less well behaved and respectful towards her mother from the moment they set foot in Sunnydale,

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Yeah, later on Joyce seemed nicer, but in S1-3, she seemed very quick to judge and even quicker to say things that dismissed and criticized Buffy. Ok, Buffy wasn't the greatest student, but she didn't swear or act defiant, except as needed by her slaying.

I think the most suggestive scene is when Buffy is outed as the Slayer, and says, "Have another drink," and then later Joyce grabs her. Would Buffy have said that if Joyce hadn't drunk too much on previous occasions ? And what would Joyce have tried to do if Buffy hadn't been strong enough to throw her off? Dragged her to her room and locked her in? There's some definite hints of bad parenting there, and in "Ted" as well, in not seeming to believe Buffy about Ted's disturbing behavior. Granted, in the Buffyverse, the abusive, controlling wannabe step-father was literally drugging everyone into seeing only the best in him, but in reality, not believing a child reporting abuse perpetuates the abuse.

I forget the name, but there's an author that has a blog that recaps Buffy episodes with a list of recurring themes which includes "this show isn't as feminist as people think it is," "Xander is a Nice Guy," and, "Joyce is a fucking terrible parent."

On the other hand, there's a story I've been reading on Elysian Fields lately that makes me see Joyce much more sympathetically, as acting to protect her daughter. For example, that she sent Buffy to a psychiatric ward because it was the only way to get her out of being charged with arson as an adult.

And in fairness to Joyce, having a kid burn down a gym (and claiming it was because of vampires) is the kind of thing that would put one on guard for quite awhile. On the other hand, if Joyce and Hank knew about Buffy's "delusions", then Joyce's behavior seems off. Like she seemed more worried that that Buffy was a delinquent than that Buffy might be having mental breaks with reality.

This makes me think that perhaps it was Dawn's introduction that brought the vampire part out, and in their new false memories, Joyce was more worried about Buffy's mental state than her "acting out." (This would also make sense in that it is in S5 that Joyce became purely the loving mother (if one who favored her youngest). (And it's also a convenient way to explain the institutionalization that got ret-conned in in "Normal Again" which is otherwise harder to credit.)

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

I just read the part about S5, and you're right, I hadn't seen it that way. I definitely thought it was preposterous to have a 20-year-old as the guardian to a 14-year-old. (Yes, there are twenty-year-old mothers, but not to kids that old. Also, those are their own kids, who may have been conceived and carried consensually, not their siblings.) Plus the kids on "Party of Five" went up to what, 25, 30? Old enough that the eldest had a real job, anyway.

I think Buffy took a lot of crap because of how responsible Joyce came to see her as. (And maybe the "love her as I love her" was partly monk-influenced?) On the other hand, with the hospital incident, it's clear that Joyce was not compos mentis, so in that particular instance I let her off the hook. She has a tumor pressing on her brain and is having breaks with reality (Buffy, fat?!), so it's not too surprising that her judgment was off.

Besides, Buffy could have soothed her and said it was better to keep her in the hospital, but Buffy was (and became more and more) a pleaser, someone who thinks they have to be perfect and do what others want in order to be worthy of love and friendship. And she's the Slayer, so she thinks of herself as omni-competent, or needing to be omni-competent.

[gehirnstuerm.livejournal.com]

I agree! Especially in the earlier seasons I never saw Joyce as a great mother and I always got the feeling that she was being unfair - even taking into account that Buffy had burnt down a gym. It got better over time, but you're right: She dumped a lot of responsibility onto Buffy, even though she was still terribly young AND already carried the burden of being the Slayer.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah Buffy didn't come across as a bad kid to me at all, even if we're going to take into account that Joyce didn't know that Buffy was the slayer and had her reasons for burning down the gym, she was mostly very supportive of Joyce and clearly trying her hardest to please her mother

[place-to-hide.livejournal.com]

I always thought that Joyce was only doing what she thought was right. I think in the beginning, she really didn't understand Buffy being a vampire slayer and all the stuff that came with being a vampire slayer. I wouldn't say Joyce was the best mom but she tried her best.

I don't usually go into great detail or length and discuss but I tried.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I think that Joyce tried definitely, I mostly take issue with the show seeming to hold the view that her actions were perfectly reasonable because of her not knowing that Buffy was the slayer, but a lot of her parenting still seemed kind of excessive to me at times

[geckoholic]

I always saw Joyce as 'trying, but too busy and distracted to really get it'? She surely did make mistakes, but I did think she ~meant well, although there was a good number of wtf moments with her for me too.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with that, I do think that she meant well, it's mostly that sometimes I think that she leaned too heavily on punishing Buffy, rather than actually listening to what she has to say (in School Hard, Bad Eggs etc),

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

Joyce was dead to me the moment she kicked Buffy out of their house. That's all I have to say about that!

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Urgh yes, and then flipping out on Buffy in front of all classmates at her welcome home party :/ Everyone's reactions annoyed me there though lol, God forbid we listen and consider why Buffy might have wanted to run away, let's all just gang up and scream at her instead

Friday May 8

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User audela referenced to your post from Friday May 8 (http://su-herald.livejournal.com/794231.html) saying: [...] wonders about fans’ views of Joyce [...]

[justwolf.livejournal.com]

I was rewatching the show recently and I assumed I'd have sympathy for Joyce now that I'm older, but actually, now that I'm 26, Joyce seems like a far worse parent than she ever did when I was 16. As a teenager I think you just accept that parents are unreasonable, but Joyce to me seemed unbelievably unhelpful and always suspecting Buffy to be in the wrong. She definitely seems to want to catch her out all the time and never listens to her. I have more sympathy for Joyce in S5, because I think in situations like that there sometimes are no solutions at all, and what Joyce came up with was maybe the best thing, but it does seem like too much for Buffy to handle.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Same! I think that when I was a teenager it was more the case that I viewed Joyce as a typical cliche Mom character, but now that I'm older I second-guess her parenting a lot more. I guess that part of it is that Joss mainly used her character in the high school years as an obstacle for Buffy, and was writing from the teenage perspective of the frustrating parental figure who is completely oblivious to your struggles, and at times that didn't leave a lot of flexibility for Joyce's characterisation

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Running in (completely off topic for this post!) to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY for yesterday. I wasn't near a computer, so belated good wishes - hope it was fun!

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[sum1-different.livejournal.com]

I never liked Joyce at all. In fact I hated her. Her kicking Buffy out of the house at the end of season 2 resonated with me bigtime. And I never found Sutherland convincing as the mother of SMG or Joyce as written to be a convincing mother of Buffy. To me she was always Buffy's fake mother. Buffy was adopted or switched at birth or something.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah I never got the feeling that she was understanding at all, but I always got that feeling that the show thought that they were portraying her as a great mother, and that her harsher parenting momemts were perfectly reasonable with the knowledge that she had.

I'm sorry, but if you see your daughter slaying a vampire for the first time and clearly dealing with some major drama, you do not respond by telling her to never return to her home if she can't make more time for you right then and there