AfterElton.com wonders what accounts for Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s gay following, and considers everything from the punchy dialogue and the characters’ outsider status to the romantic pairing of Tara and Willow and the slash-fic pairing of Angel and Spike.
However, the website notes, Whedon & Co. didn’t get everything right:
Far more problematic was Andrew Wells, one of a trio of geek villains introduced in Season 6. One of Andrew’s crimes was unleashing flying monkeys to attack the school play, and nothing says “Friend of Dorothy” like a Wizard of Oz reference. Everything about Andrew screamed gay, from his gushing over almost every guy on the show to some of his sophomoric dialogue. (Looking for hidden transistors, he tells fellow villain Jonathan, “I’ll find it if I have to check every hole in my body — and yours!”)
But the character never demonstrated any kind of self-awareness about his sexuality. Andrew remained a long-running variation on what has become a maddening television cliché: the girlie guy everyone but him knows is gay.
It is telling, however, that while main characters and fan favorites Angel and Spike are not even mentioned in the first two issues of the new comic series (although both will likely appear in future issues), Andrew has a key role to play, overseeing and training slayers under Buffy’s command. He’s still coded as gay, obsessing over Star Wars trivia and fashion (bemoaning “the cape and the little bell-bottoms” that Lando Calrissian sports in Return of the Jedi) but then immediately launches into a serious lecture about weapons and head butts.
Related: A peek at Buffy #3, from script to finished pages
April 16th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Why does he have to *say* that he’s gay? If a gay guy knows he’s gay, but isn’t dating anyone, wouldn’t it look at like like this?
And a lack of Angel and Spike don’t mean anything. They’re being done in other comics by another publisher, so Whedon’s giving them some space. It’s stretching a bit to read anything more into their absence.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Andrew was the guy faking straight even thought everyone else (and the audience) knows he’s gay in the last two seasons of Buffy. It’s a commen gay man stereotype that’s very over played. We’re laughing at Andrew for being such a homo and not knowing it.