Good commentary - I'm linking this to my halfamoon rec post (http://community.livejournal.com/halfamoon/48375.html), where I hope to collect / people will come forward with great meta like yours.
As for your first point, the sense of the argument that I got from the vid was that for all the sympathy and grief Buffy shows over the deaths of the Potentials, her major close-ups in vid footage are when she's with Spike: Buffy lying in bed with Spike's arm around her, Buffy holding the bag of blood at arm's length for Spike - which is an interesting image in itself insofar as it captures a sense of sometimes-unwilling collusion with the enemy. But (as far as the vid's concerned) it's still collusion, and all the sympathy she shows for the Potentials - and by extension, for the women we Spike see murder in the vid pre- and post-soul - isn't enough to make up for the complicity that kills.
As for the Potentials themselves, I think you're right in positing that the vid's shift to them is commentary on the show's disproportionate focus on white characters; obviously, they're also victims of white patriarchy, as we see in the Caleb shots. golexmachina has some incisive thoughts on the show's dangerous tendency toward fetishizing girls getting exploited and violated, which I've linked in my rec post. As Patricia Hill Collins says (http://mindthegapuk.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/feminism-101-patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought-in-the-matrix-of-domination/), "Depending on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed"; I think the vid pretty explicitly characterizes the Potentials as members of that last category.
Which leads us to Robin's story!
Robin has his own story to tell but having him speak for the Slayers, leading the potentials into the school, telling them where to go, re-appropriating his mothers coat, feels problematic.
These are great points. That whole Watchers-are-almost-all-dudes (except Lydia-who-appears-once and evil Gwen Post) and Slayers-are-young-girls thing always brings up the specter of patriarchy, because it is a patriarchal system; Buffy telling off the Watcher's Council in S5 didn't kill it. In fact, I think it's perfectly valid to see Robin leading the Potentials into the school as an extension of that patriarchal hold on the Watcher-Slayer relationship, and that's a valid critique of the Robin POV in "Origin Stories." Again, see Collins quote above re: simultaneously oppressor and oppressed.
"Origin Stories," part 1
As for your first point, the sense of the argument that I got from the vid was that for all the sympathy and grief Buffy shows over the deaths of the Potentials, her major close-ups in vid footage are when she's with Spike: Buffy lying in bed with Spike's arm around her, Buffy holding the bag of blood at arm's length for Spike - which is an interesting image in itself insofar as it captures a sense of sometimes-unwilling collusion with the enemy. But (as far as the vid's concerned) it's still collusion, and all the sympathy she shows for the Potentials - and by extension, for the women we Spike see murder in the vid pre- and post-soul - isn't enough to make up for the complicity that kills.
As for the Potentials themselves, I think you're right in positing that the vid's shift to them is commentary on the show's disproportionate focus on white characters; obviously, they're also victims of white patriarchy, as we see in the Caleb shots. golexmachina has some incisive thoughts on the show's dangerous tendency toward fetishizing girls getting exploited and violated, which I've linked in my rec post. As Patricia Hill Collins says (http://mindthegapuk.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/feminism-101-patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought-in-the-matrix-of-domination/), "Depending on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed"; I think the vid pretty explicitly characterizes the Potentials as members of that last category.
Which leads us to Robin's story!
Robin has his own story to tell but having him speak for the Slayers, leading the potentials into the school, telling them where to go, re-appropriating his mothers coat, feels problematic.
These are great points. That whole Watchers-are-almost-all-dudes (except Lydia-who-appears-once and evil Gwen Post) and Slayers-are-young-girls thing always brings up the specter of patriarchy, because it is a patriarchal system; Buffy telling off the Watcher's Council in S5 didn't kill it. In fact, I think it's perfectly valid to see Robin leading the Potentials into the school as an extension of that patriarchal hold on the Watcher-Slayer relationship, and that's a valid critique of the Robin POV in "Origin Stories." Again, see Collins quote above re: simultaneously oppressor and oppressed.