Willow Rosenberg - Cultural Impact

Cultural Impact

Willow Rosenberg is undoubtedly the most complexly represented girl in love and lust with other girls to be developed within a mainstream network television series.

Willow's religion and sexuality have made her a role model for audiences. Whedon, however, has compared her Jewish identity to her sexuality, stating that they are rarely made a significant focus of the show. Willow at times reminds the other characters of her religion, wondering what her father might think of the crucifixes she must apply to her bedroom wall to keep out vampires, and commenting that Santa Claus misses her house every Christmas because of the "big honkin' menorah". Buffy essayist Matthew Pateman criticizes the show for presenting Willow's Jewish identity only when it opposes Christian declarations of holidays and other traditions. The New York Times, however, named her as a positive example of a depiction of a Jewish woman, who stood out among portrayals of Jews as harsh, unfeminine, and shallow. Producer Gail Berman states that as a Jew, Willow "handles herself just fine, thank you".

In Queer Girls and Popular Culture, Susan Driver states that television ascribes to viewers what lesbians look and act like, and that realistic portrayals of girls outside the norm of white, upper or middle class, and heterosexual are extremely rare. When girls on television explore their sexuality, they often go through an "immature phase of bisexual indecision". Realistic depictions of lesbians are so rare that they become strong role models and enable "hope and imagination" for girls limited by the conditions of their immediate surroundings, who may know of no other gay people. The time and space given to Willow to go from being a shy scared girl into a confident woman who falls in love with another woman is, as of 2007, unique in television; it does not occur in one flash or single moment. It is a progression that defies strict definition. Manda Scott in The Herald states that Willow's lack of panic or self-doubt when she realizes she is in love with Tara makes her "the best role model a teen could ask for".

When viewers realized that Willow was falling in love with Tara, Whedon remembered that some threatened to boycott the show, complaining "You made Willow a fag", to which he responded, "Bye. We'll miss you a whole lot." However, he also said, "For every (negative) post, there's somebody saying, 'You made my life a lot easier because I now have someone I can relate to on screen'." Gay characters had been portrayed before on television, and at the time the popular sitcom Will & Grace was on the air. Lesbian-themed HBO special If These Walls Could Talk 2 won an Emmy. Twenty-three television shows depicted a gay character of some kind in 2000. However, these other characters were mostly desexualized, none were partnered or shown consistently affectionate towards the same person. Willow and Tara's relationship became the first long-term lesbian relationship on U.S. television. Jane magazine hailed Willow and Tara as a bold representation of a somewhat normal homosexual relationship, remarking that "they hold hands, slow-dance and lay in bed at night. You won't find that kind of normalcy on Will and Grace." Despite Whedon's intentions of not making Buffy about overcoming issues, he said Willow's exploration of her sexuality "turned out to be one of the most important things we've done on the show".

Although the show's writers and producers received a minimal negative reaction from Willow choosing Tara over Oz, the response from viewers and critics alike was overwhelming towards Whedon for killing Tara, accusing him of homophobia. Particularly because Tara's death came at a point where Willow and Tara had reconciled and were shown following an apparent sexual encounter, the writers were criticized for representing the consequences of lesbian sex as punishable by death. Series writer and producer Marti Noxon—whose mother fell in love with another woman when Noxon was 13 years old—was unable to read some of the mail the writing team received because it was so upsetting. To her, the pain expressed in viewers' letters was a logical reaction to the lack of realistic lesbian role models on television.

Patrick Krug, a biologist at California State University, Los Angeles named a sea slug with traits of sexual flexibility Alderia willowi partly for his grandmother and partly after Willow's character.