More Faith and Spike and Buffy thoughts
Apr. 17th, 2012 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsnotmymindI have thoughts an opinion I've seen a few times in my explorations in BtVS fandom. Specifically, the idea that Faith and Spike are held more accountable for their bad behavior towards Buffy than Buffy is in her bad behavior towards them. I have some thoughts on what it is about the way the show is structured that might encourage some fans to react that way.
The first obvious fact: Faith and Spike are both murderers, who have done a lot of evil to people within Buffy's social circle, but even more evil to people outside of Buffy and her social circle. Faith didn’t kill anyone we, the viewers, actually know. Neither did Spike. That's fairly typical for BtVS. Anya didn't kill anyone we know, either. Andrew is an exception, since Jonathon was a sympathetic character whom the viewers now, although he was Andrew's own friend and not a member of the Scoobies. Willow kills someone we know, but Warren is total sleaze who killed her girlfriend. Angel killed someone we know, Jenny Calendar, but the narrative encourages us to see souled and soulless Angel as two different people. I think the show makes more sense if you view Angel and Angelus as the same person (both more sense in terms of Angel's psychology and more sense in terms of the mythology of the show), but both BtVS and AtS are both inconsistent in that regard, and the narrative encourages a certain amount of distance between the two that doesn't exist with any of the other murderers on the show, including other vampires like Spike or Darla. By AtS, Angel even starts using different names depending on whether he has his soul or not.
And just in case I haven't disclaimed enough (and unending fannish feuds seem to make such disclaimers necessary), I want to emphasize that I am not saying that I think, on a Watsonian level, that Spike is better at taking responsibility as a souled being for his actions while soulless--that seems to depend largely on what storyline you are looking at, and sometimes Angel is better at it than Spike--but that there is a narrative distance between Angel and Angelus that does not exist between Spike and, uh, Spike.
Or between Darla and Darla. I don't think it's a coincidence that in Angel S3, when there’s a storyline about Angel and Darla murdering an innocent women and her children, and we see, in flashbacks, the full of horror of it, Darla does not survive the storyline. Darla, who does not have the same divide between her souled and soulless self that Angel does, commits suicide after expressing remorse for what she did to that family. Darla dies, and for once, stays dead.
Faith and Spike do not kill characters we know. They do not kill characters that are beloved by the Scoobies or Angel’s gang (even Andrew didn’t kill anyone beloved by the Scoobies). It would be harder for the audience to sympathize with them, and harder for the Scoobies and Angel’s gang to forgive them, if they did. But when it comes time for these characters be the center of a redemption story, a human face is needed to represent the victims. One way of dealing with is problem is to have a character like Holtz or Wood introduced who lost loved ones to them. That’s one of handling it. Another way of handling it is to could use major characters who have been hurt by the characters in need of redemption in non-fatal way to represent the victims. You know, like Buffy Summers.
In “Sanctuary”, and in early S7 (from “Beneath You” through “Never Leave Me”), Buffy (along with Wesley, for Faith) represents the victims of Faith and Spike respectively. In the church scene in “Beneath You”, Spike conflates earning forgiveness from Buffy with earning forgiveness from all the other people he wronged (“And she shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love… and he will be loved.”). This sets the tone for the next several episodes. In “Help”, “Seeing Red” is treated as soulless Spike's worst moment (Spike even says, "I hurt the girl", as if Buffy were the only girl he hurt). In “Never Leave Me”, Spike's other victims are discussed and he explicitly says the Buffy got off easy compared to his other victims, but she is still used to represent all his victims.
But the things Faith and Spike did to Buffy are not as bad as the things they did to people outside Buffy's show. The things they did to Buffy, are horrid, but when the show treats them as the worst things they ever did, or as representative of all their crimes, it makes them both look much better than they actually are.
On the other hand, Buffy has to represent the innocent victim. Which means that she is portrayed as forgiving and taking back Spike and Faith, while her own crimes towards them are downplayed, just as their crimes towards people outside her circle (or, in some cases, inside her circle--i.e. Faith's assault of Xander which more or less got dropped by the narrative) are downplayed.
So that's my interpretation. I think the narrative choice of sometimes using Buffy to representing all the people wronged by Faith and Spike makes Buffy look better than she actually is--and makes Faith and Spike look better than they actually are.
The first obvious fact: Faith and Spike are both murderers, who have done a lot of evil to people within Buffy's social circle, but even more evil to people outside of Buffy and her social circle. Faith didn’t kill anyone we, the viewers, actually know. Neither did Spike. That's fairly typical for BtVS. Anya didn't kill anyone we know, either. Andrew is an exception, since Jonathon was a sympathetic character whom the viewers now, although he was Andrew's own friend and not a member of the Scoobies. Willow kills someone we know, but Warren is total sleaze who killed her girlfriend. Angel killed someone we know, Jenny Calendar, but the narrative encourages us to see souled and soulless Angel as two different people. I think the show makes more sense if you view Angel and Angelus as the same person (both more sense in terms of Angel's psychology and more sense in terms of the mythology of the show), but both BtVS and AtS are both inconsistent in that regard, and the narrative encourages a certain amount of distance between the two that doesn't exist with any of the other murderers on the show, including other vampires like Spike or Darla. By AtS, Angel even starts using different names depending on whether he has his soul or not.
And just in case I haven't disclaimed enough (and unending fannish feuds seem to make such disclaimers necessary), I want to emphasize that I am not saying that I think, on a Watsonian level, that Spike is better at taking responsibility as a souled being for his actions while soulless--that seems to depend largely on what storyline you are looking at, and sometimes Angel is better at it than Spike--but that there is a narrative distance between Angel and Angelus that does not exist between Spike and, uh, Spike.
Or between Darla and Darla. I don't think it's a coincidence that in Angel S3, when there’s a storyline about Angel and Darla murdering an innocent women and her children, and we see, in flashbacks, the full of horror of it, Darla does not survive the storyline. Darla, who does not have the same divide between her souled and soulless self that Angel does, commits suicide after expressing remorse for what she did to that family. Darla dies, and for once, stays dead.
Faith and Spike do not kill characters we know. They do not kill characters that are beloved by the Scoobies or Angel’s gang (even Andrew didn’t kill anyone beloved by the Scoobies). It would be harder for the audience to sympathize with them, and harder for the Scoobies and Angel’s gang to forgive them, if they did. But when it comes time for these characters be the center of a redemption story, a human face is needed to represent the victims. One way of dealing with is problem is to have a character like Holtz or Wood introduced who lost loved ones to them. That’s one of handling it. Another way of handling it is to could use major characters who have been hurt by the characters in need of redemption in non-fatal way to represent the victims. You know, like Buffy Summers.
In “Sanctuary”, and in early S7 (from “Beneath You” through “Never Leave Me”), Buffy (along with Wesley, for Faith) represents the victims of Faith and Spike respectively. In the church scene in “Beneath You”, Spike conflates earning forgiveness from Buffy with earning forgiveness from all the other people he wronged (“And she shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love… and he will be loved.”). This sets the tone for the next several episodes. In “Help”, “Seeing Red” is treated as soulless Spike's worst moment (Spike even says, "I hurt the girl", as if Buffy were the only girl he hurt). In “Never Leave Me”, Spike's other victims are discussed and he explicitly says the Buffy got off easy compared to his other victims, but she is still used to represent all his victims.
But the things Faith and Spike did to Buffy are not as bad as the things they did to people outside Buffy's show. The things they did to Buffy, are horrid, but when the show treats them as the worst things they ever did, or as representative of all their crimes, it makes them both look much better than they actually are.
On the other hand, Buffy has to represent the innocent victim. Which means that she is portrayed as forgiving and taking back Spike and Faith, while her own crimes towards them are downplayed, just as their crimes towards people outside her circle (or, in some cases, inside her circle--i.e. Faith's assault of Xander which more or less got dropped by the narrative) are downplayed.
So that's my interpretation. I think the narrative choice of sometimes using Buffy to representing all the people wronged by Faith and Spike makes Buffy look better than she actually is--and makes Faith and Spike look better than they actually are.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-19 02:41 am (UTC)I actually do think that while this choice makes for problems in fandom/interpretation, I don't think it's a bad choice in the TV show which is really, more centrally, about Buffy than about anyone else. (Well, and Angel, on his show.) The show does have a plurality of POVs, and I do think that the redemption stories for Spike and Faith (and Willow's accepting-the-dark story, which is not quite a redemption story but is very important) are internally consistent for those characters. But on some level, I think that Spike's story and Faith's story are more about Buffy (and Angel) than themselves, you know? They represent a part of Buffy, and Buffy coming to terms with them is part of the tale; the show is ultimately not an ensemble piece. This does mean, though, that with Buffy and especially with Angel, there is less focus on what they, and people associated to them, have done to others, than maybe there should be. The problem of a protagonist-centred narrative, I guess.
ETA: I do like that Willow, while not killing sympathetic characters, did kill Characters Of Name -- Warren and Rack were more significant characters than the deputy mayor, and the show didn't shy away from the gore in her torture scene of Warren. I do wonder how different season seven would be had she actually killed Jonathan and Andrew, or for that matter anyone in the Scooby Gang; obviously had she destroyed the world there would have been no season seven.... I know that the writers did give Willow somewhat of an out with the magic, but I do think that Joss having Giles indicate that the magic is neither hobby nor addiction, and Willow's consistently taking full responsibility in season seven, are pretty positive. I know a lot of people don't buy Willow as having accepted responsibility for Villains - Grave, but I really disagree.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-19 06:38 pm (UTC)I think you are right that a lot of it is about what the characters being redeemed are focused on. And there is the whole metaphorical aspect. And of course the whole protaganist structure makes it difficult, too. Plus, you have to tell an exciting story. Making Robin Wood the son of some random woman is a lot less exciting that making him the son of a slayer.
(I do actually think the AR works better than, say, Spike trying to bite her; while that would code more closely to how Spike treats his usual victims, his problem, w.r.t. Buffy, is that he genuinely thinks that he doesn't *hurt her*, that she is exempt from his trail of destruction, and so it makes sense to me that he hurts her in a way that is consistent with him believing himself to be a good man -- i.e. him trying to convince her to love him again as a 'man'.)
Yeah, I think making it an attempted rape was the perfect choice for Spike, within story, but on the other hand it raised all sorts of real life issues that the writers were obviously not prepared to deal with. And it wouldn't have made any sense for Spike getting a shiny new soul to redeem him for over a century of rampage, but not trying to rape Buffy. So it was definitey a tricky story to write.
(That, and, of course, that Faith and Spike are 'bad' when they do their bad deeds, whereas Buffy is supposed to be the hero.)
But is Faith "bad" when she attacks Xander? At what point did Faith cross the line from being "good" to being "bad"? She's on her way down to being "bad", but if she hadn't gone any farther down than attacking Xander, than would she still have been one of the "bad guys"?
Faith is very heavily focused on Buffy, Angel and Wesley (and Giles, depending on whether you take comics canon or not)
Don't read the comics, but I always thought it was interesting that Faith never does anything to directly hurt Giles (and she even defends him to Gwen Post, back in "Revelations"). I think he is the only person in the gang whom she never hurts or seriously threatens.
I know a lot of people don't buy Willow as having accepted responsibility for Villains - Grave, but I really disagree.
Usually the argument I hear is something along the lines of, "She should have been punished more." That just a summer vacation wasn't enough of a punishment for everything she did. Which begs the question--is punishment really necessary fora redemption story? What kind of punishment? Who decides what punishment is sufficient?