October 2002 posts
Where'd the writers get "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"? -- ZachsMind, 15:58:40 10/28/02 Mon
As an interesting sidenote to this latest Angel episode titled "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," the following may or may not be an opportunity to get a glimpse into the head of Whedon & his fellow writers. The phrase, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" dates back to the works of W. B. Yeats at the turn of the 20th century. He called his piece "The Second Coming" but "slouches towards Bethlehem" is mentioned in the final line. Many scholars believe this work by Yeats to be his examination of apocalyptic prophecies/mythologies from Judeo-Christian doctrine.
The style of the poetry appears to be iambic pentameter, but perhaps as an attempt to express the lackadaisical 'slouching' he refers to in the piece, Yeats seems to purposefully be lazy and informal in his approach to the poem's structure, so that it almost reads at points like elaborate free blank verse. The rhymes too are haphazard and forced, with a seeming purposeful 'devil may care' attitude about meter and rhyme. The narrator voice in the poem speaks of a nightmarish scene in which an entropy of morality in society brings mankind upon the brink of destruction. "The best [people] lack all conviction," says the poem's voice, "while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Kinda sounds like Yeats was writing with Buffy/Angel in mind doesn't it?
In both Buffy & Angel, Whedon's writing staff is hinting at an apocalypse that's closing in on our champions. Yeats speaks of a sleeping sphinx being awoken from a nightmare by some rocking cradle, and a rough beast's time closing in, slowly making its way to Bethlehem, widely believed to be the birthplace of the Christ child (savior to the world according to Christian doctrine, and a respected prophet to many in the judeo & muslim doctrines) and perhaps one of the candidates symbolically for the Cradle of Civilzation.
Like the Buffy & Angel tv series, Yeats' work is a modernization of the apocalyptic myths, and attempt to bring the old into the new and look at it from a metaphorical, symbolic context. Was Yeats talking about the biblical Revelation, or was he seeing the potential for a modern end of the world?
Or is indeed the world constantly, perhaps even DAILY, experiencing a death & rebirth simultaneously? Change is the only constant in the universe. If the end brings about a new beginning, is it really something to be so afraid of? I guess it depends upon one's perspective.
The Second Coming
-- W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
In 1958, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe titled his novel "Things Fall Apart," reportedly inspired by Yeats' poem. The novel's theme deals with the unravelling of society and the entropy of the human psyche. Activist Joan Didion took the phrase "slouching to Bethlehem" and used it as the title for her essay about the Haight/Ashbury District in the late 1960s. Joni Mitchell put these words to music around the same time. It's difficult to determine whether Whedon pulled the title from Mitchell's work or from Yeats. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. Others since have written books and essays and whatnot using variations on this title. Such things as Slouching Towards Anarchy, Slouching Towards Cavalry, Slouching Towards Utopia, and Slouching Towards Postmodernism have been tips of the hat to Yeats original work, although oftentimes the original source does lose its original intent, if not its flavor.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joni Mitchell
based on the poem by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning
Within the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart
The center cannot hold
And a blood dimmed tide
Is loosed upon the world
Nothing is sacred
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy
The best lack conviction
Given some time to think
And the worst are full of passion
Without mercy
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely it's the second coming
And wrath has finally taken form
For what is this rough beast
Its hour come at last
Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born
Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born
Hoping and hoping
As if by my weak faith
The spirit of this world
Would heal and rise
Vast are the shadows
That straddle and strafe
And struggle in the darkness
Troubling my eyes
Shaped like a lion
It has the head of a man
With a gaze as blank
And pitiless as the sun
And it's moving its slow thighs
Across the desert sands
Through dark indignant
Reeling falcons
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely it's the second coming
And wrath has finally taken form
For what is this rough beast
Its hour come at last
Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born
Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born
Raging and raging
It rises from the deep
Opening its eyes
After twenty centuries
Vexed to a nightmare
Out of a stony sleep
By a rocking cradle
By the Sea of Galilee
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely it's the second coming
And wrath has finally taken form
For what is this rough beast
Its hour come at last
Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born
Slouching toward Bethlehem to be born
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More on this in "Angel 4.04 `Slouching` spoilers Watching the Clock" thread below -- Masq, 16:01:01 10/28/02 Mon
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Okay. So. I postmaturely exacerbated. Tis a fair cop, but society is to blame. =) -NT -- ZachsMind, 17:59:31 10/28/02 Mon
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Re: Where'd the writers get "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"? -- leslie, 16:15:22 10/28/02 Mon
Coincidentally (or not???) MaeveRigan gave a wonderful paper at the Buffy conference in Norwich based on this very poem and the relevence of the concept of "gyres" to the plot arc of season 6. Has the gyre now moved over to Angel?
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Re: Where'd the writers get "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"? -- Masq, 16:20:26 10/28/02 Mon
I could answer that question if I knew what a "gyre" was... can you give us a synopsis of MaeveRigan's paper??
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A few quotes on Yeats...definition of "gyre" -- Rufus, 16:46:34 10/28/02 Mon
Looking at Ireland's Yeats, we have an example of a poet trained in romantic conventional verse who evolves into a modern poet. Keeping his sense of form and structure, Yeats modernizes his verse in part by changing his imagrey. In contrast to the mythological Leda and the Swan, for instance, his Irish Airman files and dies in a sky of war and machinery. In The Second Coming Yeats creates a modern beast slouching toward a symbolic Bethlehem to compete with the traditional Christian message of hope and redemption.
The Heath Introduction to Poetry
2nd edition
Regarding The Second Coming p. 1355
This poem expresses Yeat's sense of the dissolution of civilization of his time, the end of one cycle of history and the approach of another. He called each cycle of history a "gyre" - Literally a circular or spiral turn (Yeats pronounced it with a hard g).
He imagines a falconer losing control of the falcon which sweeps in ever widening circles around him until it breaks away altogether, and sees this as a symbol of the end of the present gyre of civilization - which he once described as "all our scientific democratic fact-finding heterogeneous civilization."
The birth of Christ brought to an end the cycle that had lasted from what Yeats called the "Babylonian" mathematical starlight" (2000 BC) to the dissolution of Greco-Roman cultured. "What if the irrational return?" Yeats once asked in his prosed work A Vision. "What if the circle begin again?" He speculates that "we may be about to accept the most implacable authority the world has known." The new Nativity ("the rough beast of lines 21-22) is deliberately mysterious, both terrible and regenerative.
The Spirit or Soul of the Universe, with which all individual souls are connected through the "Great Memory" which Yeats held to be a universal subconscious in which the human race perserves its past memories. It is thus a source of symbolic images for the poet.
Norton
The Tower (1928) and The Winding Star (1933), from which the poems from Sailing to Byzantium through After Long Silence have been here selected, represent the mature Yeats at his very best-a realist -symbolist-metaphysical poet with an uncanny power over words. These volumes represent his fourth and greatest period. Here, in his poems of the 1920's and 1930's, winding stairs, spinning tops, "gyres," spirals of all kinds, are important symbols; not only are they connected with Yeat's philosophy of history and of personality, but they also serve as a means of resolving some of those contraries that had arrested him from the beginning. Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground we have covered before, only higher up; as we lool down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we both round and upward. Through symbolic images of the kind Yeats explores the paradoxes of time and change, of growth and identity, of love and age, of life and art, of madness and wisdom.
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Do you have more complete references for those? -- Masq, 16:52:58 10/28/02 Mon
I want to throw something together to explain the reference in my episode analysis. Helps having author and title for each, and, if possible, a website to link to for more info.
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I'll see what I can do. -- Rufus, 17:17:32 10/28/02 Mon
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Re: Do you have more complete references for those? -- ELR, 19:42:16 10/28/02 Mon
I've got several good refs for "The Second Coming." I'll get them to you tomorrow--they're on my other computer.
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Oh please could you? -- Rufus, 00:54:26 10/29/02 Tue
In moving some stuff has been misplaced....maybe you can help.
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Re: Do you have more complete references for those? -- ELR, 06:47:46 10/29/02 Tue
This website has complete text of "The Second Coming," plus helpful definitions and graphics:
The Second Coming
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Wow. Coolness! Thanks! -- Masq, 10:03:00 10/29/02 Tue
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Re: A few quotes on Yeats...definition of "gyre" -- Rufus, 17:44:17 10/28/02 Mon
Quote one is from the The Heath Introduction to Poetry
2nd edition (1984) page 265.
Quote two and three is from The Norton Anthology of Literature vol 2(1962) from the footnotes on page 1355.
"We only begin to live when we conceive life as tragedy."
W. B. YEATS
W. B. YEATS THE TRAGIC PHASE A STUDY OF THE LAST POEMS
by VIVIENNE KOCH
I found the above quote from www.questia.com...where they have Vivienne Koch's book.
I liked the above quote so mentioned it as both Buffy and Angel as series would be better understood if people realized that under the comedy is tragedy and not all dreams will come true.
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Agreed. Buffy & Angel should be publicized as tragic comedies. -- ZachsMind, 18:37:44 10/28/02 Mon
The Great Unwashed may better understand and appreciate the shows if this was telegraphed to them. However, the word "tragedy" probably would incorrectly communicate to the average tv viewer something that they'd find uninteresting or comparatively unattractive to other shows out there. So the networks push the action and comedy aspects of the two series, and then the uneducated nonBuffy fan tunes in to see what it's about, and they either 'get it' or they just think it's lame because there's not as much action or comedy as they thought there should be from their interpretation of the network's advertising.
It's part of the reason why most tv networks nowadays just go for cookie cutter sitcoms and dramas. It's easier for guys in suits to sell something like "The Drew Carey Show" or "Friends" or "Law & Order ad infinitum." When it comes to "X-Files" or "Quantum Leap" or "Alias" or "CSI" the shows have to hope they find their audience on their own, because at best the suits try to publicize the shows like they publicize other shows that are in their minds vaguely similar, because they hate taking risks and chances. At worst, the shows get little or no attention from the network suits at all, and end up like "VR5," "Freaky Links," "Strange Luck," or "Harsh Realm." Less than twelve episodes and then never again to see the light of day. Buffy was a midseason replacement, and could have easily found itself in file thirteen. How it ever made it to season two is anyone's guess.
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Eschatological projectivism -- Cleanthes, 19:18:57 10/28/02 Mon
I liked the above quote so mentioned it as both Buffy and Angel as series would be better understood if people realized that under the comedy is tragedy and not all dreams will come true.
I could not agree more. Well, maybe I can agree so much that I go beyond even your view, let's see? I like my mythological genre TV to paint on the vastest possible canvas. So, they don't just deal with tragedy, they out-Greek Greek tragedy. BtVS & Ats both make mythopoeia against prosaic risk-averse normality. That's tragedy painted on metacosmic canvas.
Rahael made some comments about Yeats in the earlier thread and I intended to respond, but threads don't last long anymore. Why, I remember when I first started posting here I could take two days to formulate a truly cogent reply. Hmmph, now I'm sounding like a true old fogey(tm).
I personally like The Second Coming best of Yeats's poems, although I'm also fond of To a Wealthy Man Who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures, hehe. I have a pocketbook of Yeats that I keep in the door storage of one of my cars for reading while waiting on things - wayward children, spouses, oil changes, etc.
Anyway, Yeats also played on the vast canvas even if he did so By sucking at the dugs of Greece. (Conner just feels 'em)
Yeats did write for the Blue Shirts, as noted, but he did it in his very advanced years and mostly as a protest against De Valera's attempts to censor the arts. Yeats should not, IMO, be lumped in with Ezra Pound, Heidegger or Joe Kennedy. In any case, this part of his life was decades removed from the composition of the slouching toward Bethlehem poem, which draws its gloom from Yeats' reflection on the Great War and the Anglo-Irish War, then current (1916-1921, civil war in Ireland 1922-23).
In `The Second Coming`, Yeats uses desert imagery because that's the image of Bethlehem and especially points east and southwest. Yeats, as I mentioned in the earlier thread, had followed the Theosophy movement of Madame Blavatsky. Her fabulously long books draw heavily from the Egypt-in-Hermetic-Myth lore. She would have thrown Spike and Dru from her midst by force of will alone, IMO.
I think ME uses this poem's words for the same reason that so many of the words of this poem have come into the language as catch phases - "the centre cannot hold"; "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,"; "twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle", etc. That last one draws more on Theosophy than Christianty, I believe. In Blavatsky's scheme, gyres of a score of centuries recur as eternally as any in Nietzche.
So, who is the rough beast? Perhaps the beast is the wrongness of Cordelia's experiences in whatever transdimenional Cloud-Cuckoo land she spent her time?
Projectivism is projecting mind-based concepts onto the external reality, assuming there is one - perhaps there's a fundamental ignorance as the Stoics suggest we ought to assume in the face of Gods, or Spinoza flat-out asserts. Or perhaps all of the seeming causal order is illogical because no is implies ought.
Regardless of the bit of philosophical choosing, writers can and must project their understanding of what concepts would be cool, beautiful and powerful if true. So they search for the strongest image, and because Angel figures in THE apocolypse, the Yeats poem fits best. Well, as far as I can see from this point in the season - I'm now really expecting some rough beast to result from the events of this Angel episode!
(BtVS deals with apocolypses [is that actually the proper plural or does it take some peculiar Greek plural - apocolypsoi?] but on Angel the Series, there's seemingly only the one that Wolfram & Hart continue to harp about.)
Cleanthes
The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are...
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
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Re: Where'd the writers get "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"? -- leslie, 20:28:32 10/28/02 Mon
I quote from the paper abstract (and perhaps MaeveRigan would be the better one to explain her paper directly):
"The widening gyre, and indeed, several images in The Second Coming, symbolize loss of innocence, irresistible change, and although most are associated with fear, destruction, and chaos--in short, entropy--the end may be less than apocalyptic. In season six of BtVS, the characters' attempts to resist or evade change or growth cause much of the apparent lack of direction and self-destructive choices. While Buffy, the central character, begins the season in confusion, she gradually spirals down to a point of certainty and renewed mission. Her friends begin as a cohesive group and spiral outward, becoming separated from Buffy and from each other by internal and external forces. Certain aspects of the show reflect this apparent disorder as well. But despite the 'anarchy,'loss of control, even total fragmentation, Yeats's widening gyre is precisely intended to take the system 'beyond experience' to rebirth. In many ways, the entire sixth season seemed like what I like to vall the 'anti-Buffy,' but in Yeats's mysterious world of opposing spirals, that is the only way to fully come back from the grave, the only way to win one's soul, the only way to get past vengence to forgiveness."
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How'd your paper go, leslie? -- ponygirl, 06:37:55 10/29/02 Tue
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I so need to post my Evil!Spike story.... -- LadyStarlight, 08:26:45 10/29/02 Tue
...that uses 'The Second Coming' as a framing device.
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Short synopsis?? -- Masq, 09:05:45 10/29/02 Tue
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Cliff's notes version -- LadyStarlight, 12:01:21 10/29/02 Tue
The chip stops working & Spike decides to get revenge on the Scoobies for kicks. Nobody dies, it's all very justified. (or felt like it when I was writing it.)
I used 'The Second Coming' to set up each bit of story, trying to get the flavour of each couplet.
And by the way, I wrote it back before Seeing Red, so ME is obviously hacking into my computer! ;)
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Looks cool! Please post or tell me where! -- shadowkat, 12:29:23 10/29/02 Tue
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Once FC is up & running, it'll be there. -- LadyStarlight, 13:23:54 10/29/02 Tue
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It's half-up... -- The Second Evil, 06:37:20 10/30/02 Wed
The majority remains at the original site, but I'm systematically transferring the files over. The new site has instructions on how to create the file for a fictionary piece. I think it's a subpage in Literary.
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Re: It's half-up... -- LadyStarlight, 07:38:16 10/30/02 Wed
I did see that page about creating files. And will be doing so within the next couple days. :)
Didn't mean to imply that things weren't going places, just that I didn't want to load more work onto you, s'all.
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Re: Cliff's notes version -- Masq, 12:33:26 10/29/02 Tue
What's your take on the poem? What do you think it means in relation to Spike? Even a few sentences on this will help me figure out what it could mean in relation to Lorne's reading of Cordy in 4.4
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Re: Cliff's notes version -- LadyStarlight, 13:12:22 10/29/02 Tue
Well, the actual quote from Yeats is:
What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Which to my mind makes this a metaphor for any great evil. I don't think it has anything to do with Spike per se, just that Lorne was reaching for an allusion. Also, we've seen Angel reading 'the classics' (Sartre, anyone?) in the past; likely Lorne had caught that in one of his previous readings of Angel and figured he would understand the quote.
Because if you don't know the poem, it really doesn't make any sense at all.
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Hmm... -- Masq, 13:24:44 10/29/02 Tue
Maybe I should rephrase my question... how did you relate it to Spike? Or use it in relation to Spike?
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Re: Hmm... -- LadyStarlight, 15:38:45 10/29/02 Tue
Okay, I've recreated the thought processes that led to the fic and I think what happened was:
- the phrase 'slouching towards Bethlehem' caught my attention,
- it made me think of Spike,
- which led to the whole Scooby revenge thing.
The phrases of the poem seemed to fit the situation I was putting everyone in as well. Does this make a little more sense? I could email you the story, that might clear everything up.
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This is all very fascinating, but what does it mean? -- ZachsMind, 09:16:47 10/29/02 Tue
Who is the falconer? Who is the falcon? Who is the beast? Is Whedon using Yeats poem as a metaphorical descriptor of what is to come in Angel & Buffy, or is he just being a literary poseur?
Who is circling away from what? In what context? There's actually a number of potential interpretations, but to what is Joss referring when he uses the phrase "slouching towards bethlehem"?
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Re: This is all very fascinating, but what does it mean? -- shadowkat, 13:01:58 10/29/02 Tue
http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/HomePages/121099/text/A3Bethlehem.htm
According to this site - the "slouching toward bethlehem" line means:
"Rather than creating a picture of the second coming of a loving and kind Jesus, Yeats expands his horizons and imagines the second coming of an anti-Christ," Johnston said. Yeats describes a mixture of Sphinx and bestiality "slouching toward Bethlehem to be born."
This "rough beast," Johnston added, is usually interpreted as the totalitarian movements of the 20th century. He said that Western civilization is captivated by interpretations of the end of the world, whether it is a literary spin on the subject, such as H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, or a musical one, such as R.E.M.'s It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)."
And this commentary:
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~ekunis/paper1.htm
Which suggests there's a religious significance and the widening gyre is moving away from god towards evil.
"not only have we grown distant from God, but we have each managed to block Him out of our minds, thus, blocking out all things good from our lives and replacing them with evil. Another cognitive metaphor for this poem is simply a journey through time-from the past to the present."
My take?
Rough beast slouching towards bethlehem to be born - means the same thing that the master said : "back to the beginning not the bang, not the word".
The falconer - uses falcons to hunt or search out the horizon, I think
the widening gyre - is the spiral
so whatever is coming will bring out the evil in everything around it. The Anti-Christ brings out the evil in us all
as Christ brings out the good. Isn't that the ultimate evil - that which brings out evil in others?
I don't know...just guessing cause have nothing better to do ;-)
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Repetition and Reversals....spoiler speculation, a guess of a sort. -- Rufus, 22:21:53 10/29/02 Tue
Yeats had a certain thought about history and the fact that it tends to not only repeat itself but reversals happen all the time. In The Second Coming he was refering to what he thought was the end of the Christian times as we know it.
In The Second Coming Yeats creates a modern beast slouching toward a symbolic Bethlehem to compete with the traditional Christian message of hope and redemption.
The Heath Introduction to Poetry, 2nd edition
On Buffy and Angel if we look to the history we know that earth started as a hell, the old ones and demons having purchase over the reality now known as the Buffyverse. For whatever reason that switched and the Old Ones had to give way to Man. But as history is all about repetition, it makes sense that Man at some point would eventually end up face to face with what once was....the Old Ones, or something older than the Old Ones, ready to take back, reverse the current situation.
Yeats believed in a cyclical theory of history in which on historical era would be replaced by an opposite kind of era every two thousand years. Here, the anarchy in the world following WW1 (the poem was written in 1919) heralds the end of the Christian era. Literature, Structure, Sound and Sense 4th edition. Perrine
Here, in his poems of the 1920's and 1930's, winding stairs, spinning tops, "gyres," spirals of all kinds, are important symbols; not only are they connected with Yeat's philosophy of history and of personality, but they also serve as a means of resolving some of those contraries that had arrested him from the beginning. Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground we have covered before, only higher up; as we lool down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we both round and upward. Through symbolic images of the kind Yeats explores the paradoxes of time and change, of growth and identity, of love and age, of life and art, of madness and wisdom.
So, why does Buffy and Spike for that matter figure into the Power equation? And remember Willow said it's all connected....we're all connected....and just as the Old ones or evil ones are connected to power, so is Willow and Buffy, hell maybe there is a surprise quality to Spike that no one ever imagined.....just a guess. Remember Hearts, Spirals, Sacrifice.......odd how Buffy is now in a position of being where she once was, but now has the perspective of who she has become. It's all about Power, who has it?
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More Yeats Angel 4.04 spoilers -- Cleanthes, 05:20:36 10/30/02 Wed
Rough beast slouching towards bethlehem to be born - means the same thing that the master said : "back to the beginning not the bang, not the word".
The falconer - uses falcons to hunt or search out the horizon, I think
the widening gyre - is the spiral
so whatever is coming will bring out the evil in everything around it. The Anti-Christ brings out the evil in us all
as Christ brings out the good. Isn't that the ultimate evil - that which brings out evil in others?
Yeah! That's the point I was trying to make in my obtuse way above here in the post entitled "eschatalogical projectivism".
The only thing I'd add is that the writers reach for apocolypse (the projectivism) and this is why Lorne asks Angel if he knows of the phrase 'slouching toward Bethlehem'. Yeats himself uses a question as a means of projecting toward apocolypse, that is, it goes, "What rough beast... "
It's not really possible to say anything definitive about apocolypses from this side of the apocolypse, despite the existence of the technical term eschatology. Only a thing that could "see" through time would be able to say anything.
That makes Cordelia and Lorne very valuable as intelligence sources, IMO. Lilah really did win the episode.
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Falconers, Lilah, Entropy and Eschatology -- alcibiades, 09:55:48 10/30/02 Wed
The falconer - uses falcons to hunt or search out the horizon, I think
...
It's not really possible to say anything definitive about apocolypses from this side of the apocolypse, despite the existence of the technical term eschatology. Only a thing that could "see" through time would be able to say anything.
That makes Cordelia and Lorne very valuable as intelligence sources, IMO. Lilah really did win the episode.
Good reference to Lilah here, Cleanthes.
You notice in this episode Lilah had one of her henchmen place a camera in Connor's room so that she can continue to track Cordelia, one of her falcons.
In their current state, I doubt that either Connor or Cordelia would know enough to discern what this is a camera.
But Lilah will sure know about their affair first hand -- if Connor and Cordelia do consummate it so we have kind of a repetition of the scenario in Entropy to look forward to -- sex on camera (which built into the scenario of SR, by the bye). .
And I bet she'll be shoving that knowledge Angel's way, possibly by way of Wesley if they are still together at that point.
Although it does kind of limit the possibility of her playing Mrs. Robinson. Which is a good, IMO.
Disagree about your conclusion about the impossibility of saying anything definitive about apocalypses despite the existence of the term eschatology.
In point of fact, the way people did "know" anything at all about them was through God granted mystical vision states -- and according to the texts (which of course many historian believes were retconned or written after the fact) these were visions that mystics had before particular apocalypses actually took place. I suppose that is more or less what you mean by your statement:
Only a thing that could "see" through time would be able to say anything.
However, the point is in the heyday of apocalyptic literature -- 200BCE - 200 CE, there were several sects of mystics who spent a whole lot of time attempting/achieving initiation in just such kinds of visions.
My point being really a technical one -- you don't have to have been there to have seen it - you could get it in a vision.
And not coincidentally, Spike on BTVS has become a bit of a visionary.
Lorne is interesting in that respect. His immediate reaction when he has his vision is to turn sick, back off and not really want to help or share.
I'm still wondering about Cordelia however. She seemed so uber-focused on Angel while she was in heaven. The perspective they showed of her was synchronic, however, not diachronic. So I am wondering really how much of anything she knows about future events.
Of course, it could always turn out that her worry over Angel was based on the fact that she knew what was coming down the road. But they showed her having a broad -- across time perspective, not a past and future perspective on the world.
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Re: Falconers, Lilah, Entropy and Eschatology -- Rufus, 14:30:36 10/30/02 Wed
You notice in this episode Lilah had one of her henchmen place a camera in Connor's room so that she can continue to track Cordelia, one of her falcons.
You sure that Lilah is the falconer and not just another falcon, one of many? The falconers ultimately the PTB's and the Home Office.
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Re: Falconers, Lilah, Entropy and Eschatology -- alcibiades, 15:19:44 10/30/02 Wed
You sure that Lilah is the falconer and not just another falcon, one of many? The falconers ultimately the PTB's and the Home Office.
Don't think I'll have a clear enough sense until later in the season.
However, the PTB seem to have a bit of a hand's off -- or laissez faire -- attitude at times.
I suppose you may be right that ultimately it is the PTB and the Home Office -- representing good and evil which are the two sides of the gyre --
However, I am not sure. Because the PTB seem so inclined not to interfere. And when Cordy interferes she is booted.
If on Buffy, we are going back to the beginning -- that might be to the inchoate primitive time before good and evil separated.
Because back to the beginning evokes "In the beg inning..." from the beginning of Genesis. And that phrase sets up the assumption that there was a something before the beginning. God existed at the very least.
Nothing from nothing is nothing... (er, couldn't resist)
I guess I was thinking of t he widening gyres more as in stories that mirrored each other between characters on the two shows.
But perhaps you are right, and we should look at it from the perspective of good and evil itself. +
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falconers -- Solitude1056, 06:48:25 10/30/02 Wed
The falconer - uses falcons to hunt or search out the horizon, I think ... so whatever is coming will bring out the evil in everything around it.
Or perhaps, direct the evil in everything else. The falconer, of course, is the mind behind the hunting falcon, which is released and returned on the falconer's command. It's a more poetic concept/word than 'military general,' I suppose.
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From beneath you it slouches towards Bethlehem? -- Slain, 13:15:07 10/30/02 Wed
I haven't be able to keep up to date with the discussion until now, so I'm assuming this has been discussed - surely the two things (the thing from beneath and the thing which slouches) are both preludes to the same thing? It always irked me a little that AtS and BtVS had to each have their own, single-serving apocalypse, where each didn't impact the other.
ASH on Graham Norton -- Dead Soul, 19:56:20 10/28/02 Mon
ASH will be on Graham Norton on BBCAmerica at 8:30 PST (about 35 minutes from now). If it's the same one I've seen, there's not much serious about BtVS beyond plugging the UK video S6 boxset and an excrutiatingly stupid skit but it was worthwhile to see ASH giggling uncontrollably throughout the entire show.
DS
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GN -- Rahael, 03:30:20 10/29/02 Tue
Graham Norton is an acquired taste but I always watch his stuff. Probably one of the few programmes I actually do watch nowadays. I saw the ASH thing ages ago.
D'Hoffryn Interuptus ("Selfless" Spoilers) -- ZachsMind, 20:15:06 10/28/02 Mon
Masq asked a really cool but potentially rhetorical question in her Selfless analysis: "Buffy doesn't kill Anya to save all of Anya's potential future victims. Would she have, if D'Hoffryn hadn't intervened? The jury is out on that one."
Of course we'll never know, but maybe we can have a sorta jury discussion on this one. It would be interesting if others might respond to this with their own opinions and interpretations. What follows is just my opinion based on observations of the episode, and you may come to different conclusions which is cool. I believe one can glean the answer to that question from the battle itself and what Buffy said leading up to the fight.
BUFFY: Xander. It's OK. She [Willow] didn't tell us for a reason. She didn't tell us because she knows what I have to do. I have to kill Anya.
We certainly know Buffy's capable. At one time or another she has gone toe for toe with practically all her friends. In "Normal Again" Season six she was under the influence of a demon's dementia, and almost killed all of them. In "Grave" she went up against Dark Willow.
ANYA: This is getting to be a pattern with you, Buffy. Are there any friends of your left you haven't tried to kill?
Then there's Angel.
BUFFY: ..Do you even remember that? I would have given up everything I had to be with- I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life. And I put a sword through his heart because I had to.
However, it was plain she didn't want to do this to Anya. She had already done this to Angel, and it ripped her up inside.
XANDER: There has to be another way.
BUFFY: Then please find it.
If she had done anything to keep from sending Angel to one hundred years of hell, she would have. At the time, she didn't know Willow was working on a way to retrieve Angel's soul.
BUFFY: Do you remember cheering me on? Both of you. Do you remember giving me Willow's message: Kick his ass.
WILLOW: I never said that-
XANDER: This is different-
BUFFY: It is always different!
Actually, in a way, it's not. Just as with Angel, it wasn't Xander who found a solution. It was Willow.
What is different is Xander's interests. He wanted to see Angel dead. However, he didn't want to see Anya dead. This time, Willow was able to get the solution there in time. Xander actively sought to slow down the battle between Buffy & Anya, whereas with Angel he did what he could to speed it forward, which didn't buy Willow the time she needed to help Buffy save Angel.
We know Buffy cared more for Angel than she ever could for Anya. She does care for Anya but as a friend, not as much as she cared for Angel. Yet she did what she thought she had to do to save the world. She put the sword through Angel's chest. She sent him to hell.
So on the surface it would appear that had D'Hoffryn not intervened, Buffy would definitely have killed Anya outright. However, then there's the actual fight itself. Buffy was uncharacteristic. She had no fancy retorts or one-liners. She said little, and got to it real quick, but Anya was beating the ever lovin' crap out of her, or so we (and she) were led to believe. At the point when Anya throws her across the room for the last time, and Buffy stands right back up.
BUFFY: Anya, I'm sorry.
ANYA: You're apologizing to me. What fight are you watching? Or is this like one of your little pop-culture references I don't get, 'cause I'm a vengeance-
Anya lunged at Buffy. Buffy immediately turned the tables on her, having made Anya feel over-confident. She spins Anya against the wall, then thrusts her sword into Anya's chest, pinning her to the wall. Now. This is not the first time Buffy's gone up against a demon. She knows what kills them. In the episode "Help" just the previous week, she took a torch and set the demon of the week on fire. In the sixth season episode "Older And Far Away" Buffy witnessed Halfrek take a blade into her gut, and Halfrek survived. Granted, Buffy went for Anya's heart, not her gut, but demons aren't like vampires and wooden stakes. It's rare that a demon goes down just after a single blow to the heart. Buffy knows this.
ANYA: Forgotten how much swords through the chest hurt. (pulls it out) Aaahh! (breathes heavily) You know better than that, Buffy. It takes a lot more to kill a vengeance demon.
BUFFY: Oh, I'm just getting started.
She didn't seem very surprised. Perhaps this time it was Buffy who was buying Xander or SOMEONE time to keep her from having to finish Anya permanently. Fortunately for both Anya & Buffy, Willow pulled through.
K'BOOM!!!
D'HOFFRYN: Oh, please, don't mind me. Continue with whatever it was you were doing.
What precisely were they doing? Buffy was purposefully allowing Anya to get the upper hand. She lulled Anya into a state of over-confidence, then pinned her to the wall like a straight pin in a butterfly.
Buffy wasn't killing Anya. In her own way, Buffy was trying to help Anya. She was teaching her a lesson. You could call it a selfless act on Buffy's part, allowing Anya to believe she was winning. Letting herself get hit a few times, because Anya is a friend after all. Let her feel she's doing well. Ultimately though, Buffy taught Anya that as a demon, Anya's beneath her. And if Anya ever tries to kill people again, Buffy will be right there to stop her. Same time. Same place.
D'Hoffryn was for Anya what Angel's soul was for Angelus. However, this time, both Xander & Willow pulled through for Buffy, and allowed her a chance to find that third option. Had D'Hoffryn not intervened, eventually Buffy would have had to kill Anya.
Has Spike changed? -- Tchaikovsky, 09:21:03 10/29/02 Tue
First off, I feel a little guilty for starting another Spike thread, as I occasionally fall into the camp myself of feeling he gets rather too much thread-time.
However.
I was reading an interview with James Marsters in Edinburgh Evening News. The link is:
http://www.edinburghnews.com/whatson.cfm?id=1192302002
After having thought about and dscussed whether Spike had changed/re-invented himself much over the last five years or so, I was most interested to read James' comments:
"He is the same," he says forcefully. "He is not any different than he was in the beginning - and what I really enjoy about playing the role is that they're [the writers] just digging a bit deeper rather than just changing course.
"Spike was always a very dangerous character, but one who was a complete gentleman to his girlfriend, completely faithful. So much so that he probably fell in love with Buffy when he first saw her, but didn't admit it to himself because he was already in love with Dru [Drusilla] and would never act on anything that would pollute that relationship.
"And so you see, his great devotion and his great love for Buffy is mirrored very much when he was with Drusilla. Believe me, if that chip came out, he would start to kill immediately. That day! When you watch next season, you will actually see some of that."
I think he refers to Season Six here, which is about to start showing in the UK. Anyway, this chimes with my opinion really, but clearly James Marsters, despite being able to portray the lines as he will, must use the lines the writers give him.
So, the big question repeated:
Is Spike 'the same'?
Is it a case of 'Plus ca change...' as Deep Space Nine would have us believe?
In what way is he the same?
And, most importantly, does that mean he's still partial to Weetabix?
TCH
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Re: Has Spike changed? (spoilers for 6.22 and 7.1) -- shadowkat, 10:06:13 10/29/02 Tue
Having read almost all of James Marsters interviews now, (I got really really bored at work one day and there was zip I hadn't read on the board), I'll say I'd take half of what he says about Spike with a grain of salt.
He has no clue where his character is going. He thought giving Spike a soul would make him a patsy. He thought the chip would render him silly. He admits that Whedon continues to surprise him with choices he as an actor/writer would never have made.
In one interview he insists his character was probably a jerk. Then laughs and says now Joss will probably make him a choir boy.
What is amusing to me about Marsters interviews is Marsters himself appears to have taken the same voyage as Spike in his life. According to him: he started out as the geeky poet type in Junior High, turned into the cocky leather jacket, punk rocker type in High School and College, got kicked out, got into some nasty scrapes, finally cleaned up his act and now writes and stays far away from the street fighting. Then he says - haven't really changed all that much, still have that dark edge. He also states that the more Whedon finds out about MArsters - the more he sees himself in Spike.
If you want to read all these interviews for yourself?
Check out www.spikespotting.com.
It is possible of course that he's ribbing us on all of this. ;-)
So ignoring what Marsters says about Spike for a moment.
What do I think based on the story?
Yeah Spike has changed. But in some ways he's getting back to who he really is. "Spike" - the vampire/demon persona always felt like a put on to me, the mask, just like Anyanka's demon mask. The real Spike lurks underneath the bravado and violence. And that part of himself scares him because it's vulnerable. Just as Anya's true self scares her. "What if I'm just a nobody?"
Same with Willow.
"The more we change the more we stay the same, just putting on new customs." But that statement is misleading. It's not meant to mean we can't grow or expand or become better people. It's meant to mean that as we grow and expand and change - we get more and more back to the person we are, the one that resides inside our soul.
In Spike - there's Spike - the badboy/the demon/the want take have, and there's William - the lover, the poet,
the vulnerable schoolboy who wants to be good. And of course there's the man in between that is a little of both.
Has he changed? Not really - he was always those three people. What has changed - is he is becoming more and more William and less and less badboy Spike.
Just as Marsters as he grew became less and less punk boy and more and more sensitive actor boy. Until as a man he incorporated both - releasing the violent urges in a more productive way.
A much better example might actually be Giles. Giles started out as geeky boy, then became Ripper (who apparently was a lot like Spike. The writers even went so far as to place a 17 year old photo of ASH on top of the body of Sid Vicious to depict young Ripper in Dark Age another example is Ripper's behavior in Band Candy which is incredibly similar to early Spike), then eventually incorporated these traits into Giles.
So started as Rupert, became Ripper, became Giles.
Did he change? Not really. He was always these people.
He just changed in how he perceived them and how they were incorporated inside him. As he grew older, he became more and more who he was - instead of just variations on it.
As Spike grows - he becomes more and more like William, and less like the vampire that infected him or the twisted version of William. The soul allows him to get back to who he really is at his core and we've only seen glimpses of that person.
Hope that made sense. I almost confused myself. ;-) SK
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Maybe he contains multitudes? -- Caroline, 10:23:25 10/29/02 Tue
I think you get to the heart of the matter s'kat. We may change but we do essentially remain who we are because all those things we change into are just unexplored potentials within ourselves coming to light. Giles is Ripper but he's also Librarian and Watcher and a bunch of other things too. The same with Spike and Willow. It was well brought home in Selfless - Anya was in quite a few ways essentially the same person as Aud. To quote one of my favourite Whitman lines, 'I contain multitudes'. The problem comes when we try to disown those potentials - as Willow and Buffy are in danger of now.
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Didn't Giles say as much in Lessons? -- Sophist, 10:51:37 10/29/02 Tue
"We always are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed."
OTOH, adding a soul to a vampire seems like a pretty big change to me.
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Re: Didn't Giles say as much in Lessons? -- alcibiades, 11:18:15 10/29/02 Tue
Isn't it more that the vampire was always a part of William. The way he would be without the soul.
Just like 4.2 Buffy is a part of Buffy -- it's the way she would be without a soul.
It is still a part of you -- the id part, the part that has no conscience and no moral compass.
But it is part of what has to be incorporated in order to make someone whole.
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Interesting Hypothesis -- Tchaikovsky, 11:30:08 10/29/02 Tue
It's fun, (if possibly unilluminating) to speculate on the parallel between the id and the personality of vampires in the Buffyverse. Consider the moment in an early season where Buffy assures someone that a person's original personality has no correlation to their evil self. Angel quickly chokes back a 'Well, actually..'. The fact that he says throws an unpleasant light on his vampire-with-a-soul character, and the original character of Liam, as it suggests there was a little of the torturous, heartless vampire in each.
So which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Is it that once the human super-ego disappears into the ego, the crazy, primal id takes over, but there is no innate change in this aspect of the personality? Does the absence of repression merely allow human thoughts to come out? I'd say yes. There is an element of vampire psyche in humans. And would therefore agree with alicibade's originally startling comment, (to me at least) that 'the vampire was always part of William'.
I would be fascinated to read someone putting the opposing argument, however, as I'm not sure I'm totally convinced of my new-found opinion.
TCH
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Re: Interesting Hypothesis -- Freki, 12:01:03 10/29/02 Tue
It was in Doppelgangland, written by Joss, that Buffy reassures Willow that VampWillow was nothing like her, and Angel chokes back that "Well, actually" comment. And we saw last season that Willow really does have the sadistic impulses of VampWillow. We also saw Angel getting out the office supplies for a torture session on Linwood when he was trying to get information out of him last season.
The vampire beast we saw in the Pylea episode was violent, but not intelligent. I think the vampire still retains the human personality, but without the restraint of a conscience.
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Thanks- I can never remember episode titles from way back! -- Tchaikowsky- mmm, I might prefer that w, Sophist. We'll see., 14:17:04 10/29/02 Tue
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Addendum -- Darby, 07:37:21 10/30/02 Wed
For those whose early ep exposure comes from syndication or FX, that line is one of the crucial building-the-mythology lines that have been cut for time.
Collect the whole set!
...Actually, someone's probably done that...
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um, which one is 4.2? -- anom, 21:52:31 10/29/02 Tue
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Living Conditions -- Vickie, 22:42:57 10/29/02 Tue
When demon roommate Kathy stole Buffy's soul breath-by-breath (and never completely).
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Thanks Caroline agree and in regards to Sophist vampire line -- shadowkat, 11:31:26 10/29/02 Tue
Once again, Caroline, thanks for putting what I meant to say in much more succint and clear terms. That's it exactly.
There are multitudes in us - we just have to accept all those angles of ourselves as part of the whole.
""We always are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed."
OTOH, adding a soul to a vampire seems like a pretty big change to me."
Actually alcibades may have already stated this - but in order to become who he is, William required his soul.
Without it - he's just one part of the man. Not whole.
ie. The id. So the change merely caused him to become more of who he already was prior to the vamping - more of the personality that was there before the vamping twisted it and took it on.
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Responding to s'kat, alcibiades and Tchaikowsky -- Sophist, 12:43:57 10/29/02 Tue
I remember having a long discussion on this topic before. Probably more than one, knowing both myself and this Board.
Anyway, the problem I have with the "vampire is in all of us" theory is this: to become a vampire, there is a demon who takes possession of the body. That is expressly stated in WttH, The Harvest, and Angel. In order to assert that Spike was always "in" William, we'd have to argue that the demon who set up housekeeping in William's body added nothing whatsoever to the "id" of William. I find this hard to believe. Therefore, I think that, while some aspects of Spike may have been hidden in William, not all of them were. Nor do I think we have any way to know which is which at this point.
I would also note that if Spike is "merely" an expression of William's "id", then restoration of the soul should restore William. Clearly it does not; the re-souled creature is new all together, not William and not Spike, but something different. Just like Angel is not Liam.
I guess I should also say that, while I quoted Giles, I'm not at all sure that I agree. I do think (thanks Rah) that people can change and are not fixed in character. Limited maybe, but not fixed.
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My take on this thorny issue -- Finn Mac Cool, 14:25:39 10/29/02 Tue
I still think that part of the canon established in The Harvest is true; namely, that vampires are demons which are not the same entities as their human predecessors. However, the demon seems to have no memories of its own. All its life experience comes from the human being. And, as who we are is largely determined by what happens to us in life, the demon takes on characteristics of the human. The crucial difference is that the demon brings a totally new outlook to the human's memories. Human beings are naturally drawn to do good, with a few exceptions who have regressed into sociopathy (a complete lack of morals or conscience). Demons, on the other hand (or at least the demons that go into making vampires), are naturally drawn to do good, with a few you upgrade to amorality (Harmony and Spike seemed very close to this). When William became a vampire, he retained the lessons he learned in life, the ones that taught him to be meek and turn away from violence. But, the demon had a different outlook on these memories. He saw the way William had learned to behave as abhorrent and totally against his grain of evil. Thus, he became a creature which appeared very different from William, for his way of looking at what he had been taught varied drastically. There was little the human and the demon agreed on, though they both felt the same way about love (though the demon's view on love was for a very different sort of woman).
Now that Spike has a soul, the human being called William is in control, though the demon called Spike is still in there, talking to him, much like an inner monologe, only one he can't stop. I agree this souled Spike seems very different from William, but William didn't have a hundred and twenty years of death and carnage to integrate into his personality.
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I agree- and,,, -- Tschaikowski- trying various renderings on Cyrillic, 14:50:15 10/29/02 Tue
Firstly, I agree with your take that there is a difference in experience between William and our new Spike, and, similarly, between Liam and Angel. Even a 142 year old in a 22 year old's body, (if they have always been human), is going to act differently from a 22 year old. But if this doesn't appease everyone on the 'vampire inside' issue, I'd say further that there is still a difference in feeding.
We know that Angel drinks pig's blood, and that Spike appears to be living off rats. But there always seems to be portrayed, throughout the cannon, a desire, a need, for human blood. Maybe it's not required for survival, but, like many vegetarians crave meat, it is a natural urge. Humans don't necessarily need meat to survive healthily, but there is still a desire for it. In 'Dracula' and throughout Buffy's run, this desire has been an analogue to sexual desire. This is another latent reason why the original and re-ensoulled characters are not templates of each other.
And of course, Spike still has the chip. I'm sure that's still affecting his psyche. The lack of free will, even free will to do something amoral, cannot help someone in his situation. I've just thought about a link between Spike's predicament, and the protaginist Alex in 'A Clockwork Orange', (particularly the book). Has this been explored here before? If not, I may have a play tomorrow.
Goodnight everyone
TCH
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I think that I have to hurt you now... -- Caroline (pouting cos my button's been pushed and it hurts), 15:03:55 10/29/02 Tue
because you said that it is natural to crave meat and that vegetarians do crave meat. That is like saying you're not born gay. I don't think I need to say more.
But don't worry - I won't hurt you too bad. Vegans unite!
As for the more Buffy related parts of your post - you may wish to look up shadowkat's essays - I seem to remember she did one a while back on Spike and A Clockwork Orange. You may also wish to try the archives for threads on identity, psychological analysis etc. Lots of good MEATY stuff.
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People are born vegetarian? -- Tchaikovsky, 01:03:17 10/30/02 Wed
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Quick defence -- Tchaikowsky, 02:01:29 10/30/02 Wed
I wrote:
like many vegetarians crave meat, it is a natural urge. Humans don't necessarily need meat to survive healthily, but there is still a desire for it.
I think this is true. I didn't say all vegetarians crave meat. And I made it clear that it's not unhealthy to avoid meat. Through general stupidity, I don't really get your relation of this to people being born gay, or not.
I'm sorry if I offended you. You probably don't need to hurt me. Just picture me crying after England lose each Test Match in the next couple of months. Because it may well happen.
TCH- being very pessimistic about the Ashes, in the forlorn hope that he may be pleasantly surprised
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Re: Quick defence -- Caroline, 07:06:05 10/30/02 Wed
Hey, I'm just teasing you. I wouldn't really hurt you - after all, I'm vegetarian and it would be bad to hurt anything made of flesh. I understand that this is your opinion, I was just disagreeing and hoped I was doing it in a taking-the-piss kind of way. Obviously I did not succeed. My apologies.
As for the Ashes, I promise not to gloat too much. But in the unlikely event that England do manage some wins, I could have egg on my face!
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But now you've got *me* curious... -- Darby, 07:47:17 10/30/02 Wed
Were you equating behavior leanings with digestive chemistry? Or is it a preferences thing running contrary to "normal" chemistry?
- Darby, wondering if I'm a curious kitty...
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Would like to know as well.. -- shadowkat, 08:17:22 10/30/02 Wed
Actually Darby's not the only one curious here. After reading the posts on this thread, i started thinking about some friends of mine, specifically my brother who have gone off meat and animal products because of digestive problems.
My brother is lactose intolerant and also has problems digesting certain types of meat. He will occassionally give in but it results in heart burn and stomach problems. He's found that he just digests vegetables better.
I've known other people with a similar problem.
I love meat, but don't eat too much of it for similar reasons and well expense...on a tight budget right now.
Once and a while is fine, but too often? Heart burn like you wouldn't believe.
So i'm wondering...is this what you're referring to?
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Okay, I'll share.... -- Caroline, 08:50:02 10/30/02 Wed
As long as I can remember, I have not felt the desire to eat meat. I was the kid that ate all the vegies and wouldn't eat the meat. My family thought I was weird. Now, as an adult, I do not eat meat nor dairy and am quite happy. My best friend, who is gay, describes her lesbianism in the same way I describe my vegetarianism. I feel that I was born vegetarian and she feels she was born gay.
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Apologising for narrow-mindedness -- Tchaikovsky, 07:11:16 10/31/02 Thu
Well, that's really interesting. I have to admit I hadn't heard of anyone like that before. In your experience, are there many vegetarians who are like this? I thought most people turned vegetarian for health reasons or reasons of morality to do with killing fellow animals.
TCH- going back to adjust his stereotypes
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Beef -- Rahael, 07:33:19 10/31/02 Thu
I've only really started eating beef this year - I thought it was a really strange taste, and it took some adjusting to.
I grew up in an area where cows are sacred, and you just didn't kill them. In fact, not eating meat at all was a really normal, and completely viable way of life, simply because vegetarian food there is soo delicious. I'm not talking about the kind of vegetable curries you get in Indian restaurants. These were fresh vegetables, often grown in your garden, lightly cooked with some appropriate spices (onion, garlic, a little mustard seed perhaps, some fenugreek, and coconut milk to finish). In fact, the fresh fish we had every day for lunch was more of a staple than red meat.
We did have cows though, who gave us milk to drink, but we loved them - we didnt' crave beef, nor would we think of eating them. They gave us milk, and were the major form of transport beside bikes (bullock carts, etc). Even though we weren't Hindu, we had internalised the local customs. When the foreign 'peace keeping' army arrived we sold the cows and the goat because we knew they were going to end up killed, but we didn't want to see them slaughtered for food in front of us.
The only reason I've started eating beef with any regularity is because it's leaner than lamb, and besides my boyfriend hates lamb and likes beef, and there's no point going out for dinner if you can't eat from each other's plate!
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Fulfilling stereotypes -- Arethusa, 07:50:31 10/31/02 Thu
I gave up meat years ago because I was appalled by the sanitation standards and other practices in the meat-packing industry, not for ethical reasons. Animals kill and eat other animals all the time. (That's just my rationalization, and not an attack on vegetarians.) I still eat poultry and a little fish, so I'm not a true vegetarian. And I do crave meat sometimes. Beef Stroganoff. Steak Diane. A really good hamburger. BLTs. But on the very rare occassions I do eat meat it's difficult to digest and I feel like I'm eating flesh, which of course I am.
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No worries, mate -- Caroline, 08:42:54 10/31/02 Thu
Yeah, I've met lots of people like me. (Maybe I should start a support group!) Many vegetarians do stop eating meat for ethical and health reasons and even spiritual ones (it actually is a great benefit to meditation, which is why so many religions have some form of fasting). I discovered all those reasons later. My mother is unsurprised about my diet now - she witnessed my food preferences from an early age and she also thinks I was born this way.
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Clockwork Orange -- shadowkat, 06:33:16 10/30/02 Wed
Actually I did explore this link sometime ago.
check out my essay Spike:Demolished Man or Conflicted Vamp on www.geocities.com/shadowkatbtvs
It is also somewhere in the archives - probably March or April...can't remember.
Gist? Or cliff Notes version? Here's last two paragraphs:
"So if demons have free will, what happens when Spike has the chip removed? Well if we go by the American and movie version of the novel A ClockWork Orange -Spike will probably go back to his nasty ways. In that version of the novel a group of left-wingers kidnap Alex and remove his conditioning, re- enabling him to commit violent acts again, which he chooses to do without compunction. The conditioning did not change Alex. All it did was put him on a leash. He did not become a different person because of it. It did not rehabilitate him. But Alex didn't fall in love. Or care about anyone but himself. Nor did Alex have the memories of a Victorian Gentleman in his head.
It is important to note that in the British version of the novel, A Clockwork Orange, the version Burgess intended and has twenty-one chapters instead of twenty, Alex gives up violence a few months after his conditioning is removed. Not because the conditioning was removed, but because he has learned that there is more to be gained from creation than destruction. Burgess believed that was part of growing up. It was the reason his version had twenty-one chapters. The other version - the twenty chapter version - in Burgess' view was an allegory not a novel. The character has not gone through any transformation. The character has not grown. Instead he remains stunted or arrested in adolescence. He remains a "clockwork orange" or a windup toy made of juice and bone to do the bidding of God or the Devil without any choice. Of course - Burgess' character was human and Spike is a demon, but if we consider that vampires are metaphors for arrested development, is it not possible that Spike could in fact evolve in the direction of Burgess' character? Grow past the "windup toy for destruction" metaphor and become something more? Possibly become human?"
Of course we've all decided demons don't have free will so maybe that's one of the many reasons they gave him a soul?
So they can legitimately answer the question?
Knowing Whedon, I'd be shocked if he hadn't read the English Version and seen the movie. I know Marsters saw the movie and based his portrayle of Spike in Season 4 -6
partly on Malcolm MacDowelle's portrayle of Alex.
See 1999 Interviews of Marsters on www.spikespotting.com
for confirmation.
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Great essay -- Tchaikovsky, 06:57:40 10/30/02 Wed
And there are so many more to read!
Thanks
TCH
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thank you and yes...I'm anything if not prolific. ;-) -- shadowkat, 07:44:57 10/30/02 Wed
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Petrie refers to Clockwork Orange in his commentary for the Initiative, S4 DVD -- Rahael, 07:05:25 10/30/02 Wed
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Yes his comment was -- Rufus, 14:26:45 10/30/02 Wed
"We Clockwork Orange'd Spike" but he didn't go into anymore detail.....darn.
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Hmmmm... (warning: slightly off-color analogy) -- Sophie, 06:43:48 10/30/02 Wed
I always thought that the difference between human blood and pigs (or rats or whatever) blood was the like the difference between sex without the condem and with the condem.
You also notice that Angel drinks his blood chilled and Spike prefers his warmed.
S
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Re: My take on this thorny issue -- yez, 14:53:51 10/29/02 Tue
I more or less agree with this, except I'm not so sure about the "drawn to do evil" part.
To me, it seems that vampires are drawn to feed on humans, and because we humans aren't real partial to that idea, we see it as evil. Human don't accept vampires -- we kill them when we can -- and so vampires have to real reason to to do "good" -- which humans define as humans not being treated as "walking happy meals," among other things. And not being invested in human society -- the dominant culture -- vampires and other demons have very little at stake, pardon the pun, in maintaining order. Human order.
That kind of behavior isn't uncommon among some humans who feel marginalized (well, maybe not the consumption of blood, but...). And we do have evidence that some vampires and other demons do want to fit in with humans or at least to coexist peacefully, including Spike, Harmony, Clem, Lorne, etc., and all those fetish vamps that sucked for human pleasure.
yez
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Re: My take on this thorny issue -- Finn Mac Cool, 16:26:37 10/29/02 Tue
I think I can back up my "drawn to do evil" statement.
1) We have seen cases where vampires seem to have almost a religion celebrating evil (which can be seen particularly well in the case of the Master, Angelus, and their minions).
2) Several vampires have defined themselves as evil, rather than saying that humans are evil and vampires are good.
3) Angelus could not be burned by the Judge because he was a creature of pure evil. Giles statement earlier that no human has ever survived the Judge's touch implies that no human being is totally evil, even though on both shows we have seen many examples of amoral and sociopathic humans. The reason is that, as bad as humans get, they never get worse than amoral, while meanwhile, vampires and most demons are drawn to doing evil for evil's sake.
4) "...Most people ...are guided by, 'you should be good, you're good, you feel good.' And most demons are guided simply by the opposite star. ...Spike ...is getting more and more completely conflicted. But basically his natural bent is towards doing the wrong thing. His court's creating chaos where as in most humans, most humans, is the opposite...." (Joss Whedon, 3/30/01 The 18th Annual William S. Paley Television Festival)
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Re: My take on this thorny issue -- yez, 22:47:55 10/29/02 Tue
I realize all the creator quotes are against me in this, and I respect your POV, but I can't help but see what I see. So here's my thinking:
1. But we've also seen cases of vampires and other demons trying to "fit in" with human ideas of right and wrong.
2. I think in real life, people who are rebelling against the dominant society for whatever reason often define themselves as "bad." They reclaim the word that's used to condemn them, and thereby undermine it, kind of like gay people appropriating "queer" or "fag."
3. I haven't seen this ep. so I can't speak to this point, except to say that Giles isn't always right.
4. Well, who can argue with The Creator -- except to say that sometimes, the created take on a mind of their own. I can't help but take that the quote out of context not having seen the rest of it, but regardless of context actually the doing things to feel good is, IMHO, all part of how we're socialized, and vampires, of all creatures we've seen on BtVS, do things to feel good -- regardless of how those things make others feel.
Despite the simplistic "demons are evil, humans are good" party line that I've heard from various ME sources including characters on the show, my viewing of the show has led to a more complex read of the Buffyverse -- especially once you factor in the demons on Angel. And I just can't believe that people who are responsible for creating such a rich, dynamic environment for their characters and story would have created such a simplistic rule. It just doesn't make sense when held up against the behavior of various demons, particularly Spike.
yez
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So the Master is kind of like the Gil Gerald of vampires? -- Slain, 12:58:49 10/30/02 Wed
The way I see good and evil in the Buffyverse is that 'Evil' means anything against humanity, and 'good' means anything which benefits humanity. Vampires, having human bodies, use human terms, and from a human point of view they are evil. Are vampires drawn to do evil, meaning to harm humanity? Well, yes. We haven't had any real evidence to the contrary. Demons are drawn to do evil, because they live in opposition to humanity.
The dominant society angle doesn't work for me, because I think demonkind and humanity (including the PTB and its agents) are two different societies; coexisting, but only with conflict. Demons can coexist peacefully with vampires, but that doesn't mean they're 'good'; they're merely 'not evil'. Even the Host, the most integrated demon we've ever seen, doesn't seem to care about humanity for its own sake; he's more concerned about the himself or the world in general, because I don't think demons can fully empathise with humans.
Vampires are somewhat different, but ultimately they're demons walking around in dead human bodies, not humans. They're drawn to do evil, because they're automatically drawn into conflict with humanity by their very existence. Good and evil for me is what happens when these two societies conflict; so, at most, I'd argue that demons can be 'not evil', but because they're not human, they can't be good. Look at the demons in AtS - their main goal is not to help humanity, but to escape it. Even Spike, it could be argued, didn't care for humanity in 'The Gift', but only for Buffy. Perhaps, then, love can transcend good and evil; a demon can do good because of love. That would explain, I think, why some demons can apparently break from the basic idea of good and evil.
So I'd argue demons, including vampires, are drawn to do evil, because evil is harming humanity and that's usually the result of human-demon conflict, of two opposing societies living on one world; but love can make demons see things from a human perspective, and empathise with them.
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Re: So the Master is kind of like the Gil Gerald of vampires? -- yez, 13:53:47 10/30/02 Wed
By your definition of evil as subjective, I'd agree with you. I guess for me, "evil" has more of a religious, unequivocal connotation -- and one that I don't agree with. In other words, I don't agree that there is Good and Evil -- objective forces or powers.
That said, my impression of what the Scoobies mean when they say "good" and "evil" is that they mean Good and Evil. They mean that humans have a higher priority of existence, that humans are the chosen tribe, so to speak, and that demons do not find favor in the eyes of TPTB.
"Even the Host, the most integrated demon we've ever seen, doesn't seem to care about humanity for its own sake; he's more concerned about the himself or the world in general, because I don't think demons can fully empathise with humans."
I think this might be holding demons to a higher standard of conduct or integrity than humans are held to. Aside from the humans on the show that are on a "mission," I don't think we've been given a lot of examples of humans caring about humanity, as opposed to just caring about saving their own butts. But actually, caring about humanity, IMHO, always comes down to the desire to save our own butts -- or our collective butt, I guess. And it's a chicken and egg thing -- why would any demon want to save human butt? I mean, isn't part of they mythology that demons were here before humans and then forced "out" because of us?
yez
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Demon butt. -- Slain, 15:24:16 10/30/02 Wed
Yes, precisely - the Host, and other demons, aren't expected to care about humanity, because they're demons; it's not natural for them to empathise with humans, even if they might not want to harm them, they have their own species to consdier first - in the same way that Buffy considers her own species before that of demons.
I think part of the turmoil in Buffy's relationship with Spike was her disliking the idea that, perhaps, her ideology was subjective; that demons were just like humans, only from a different pespective. I don't think Spike believes in good or evil - Buffy believes that good is the true force in the universe, and the Master believed that evil was the true force in the universe. But Spike view's is that neither side is the more intrinsically worthy, which is why he seems to reject the labelling of himself as evil.
It's essential for Buffy to believe that good should prevail, and that evil should be destroyed, much as the reverse was true for Angelus, when he tried to bring about the destruction of humanity. I do think Buffy acknowledges that her view is subjective to an extent (certainly more than Riley, for example), as she's able to see 'the other side' as more than just evil, and to sympathise with people (such as Anya) which she believes she must kill.
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^ Spoilers for 7.5 above ^ -- Slain, 15:26:05 10/30/02 Wed
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pretty much agreed -- yez, 15:50:59 10/30/02 Wed
Sounds like we share similar POVs. Butt... :)
I'm not sure Spike objected to being perceived as evil. I think he took exception to being perceived as nothing but a thing -- not a man, not a being with real feelings. My impression was that it was -- or used to be -- quite important for Spike to see himself and have others see him as a bad mo'fo. He felt lost and emasculated without that identity.
yez
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Where'd you get the idea that the Scoobies see things as Good vs. Evil rather than good vs. evil? -- Finn Mac Cool, 15:26:30 10/30/02 Wed
For one thing, there is a general lack of forces of good on BtVS. It's hard to have a Good vs. Evil philosophy when there is no Good, simply good. Though, that outlook would make sense for the Angel characters. Keep in mind that even on Angel, where demons are good as often as humans (and humans are evil as often as demons) they still stick to their guns that vampires are evil at heart (provided that they don't have souls). In fact, there have been a couple episodes where they've toyed with the audience about vampires and redemption (I'm thinking of Disharmony and Hearttrob) but still reiterate the message that, with a soul, a vampire is instinctively drawn towards doing the wrong thing.
Oh, just to be clear: when I described vampires as being drawn to evil, I meant drawn to doing evil acts. Or, at least acts I consider evil (as do the Scooby Gang and the vast majority of humanity). Since the vampires also readily describe themselves as evil, and on occassion have taken offense if it's implied that they are good (I'm thinking primarily of Spike's constant refrain in Season Four "I'm still evil!", but also Angelus's disgust at playing the role of his souled self in Innocence).
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Re: Where'd you get the idea that the Scoobies -- yez, 17:32:14 10/30/02 Wed
Lots of little things give me that impression. The way the Scoobies tend to talk about beings as being evil. To me, it sounds more like "He's Evil" than "What he did was evil." Even the whole "Big Bad" reference seems to refer to some mystical force of Evil instead of subjective evil (things that hurt humans and human society and organization).
Then there's the whole concept of "heaven" and "hell" dimensions.
And while I realize Angel is it's own show and that they've never really talked much about TPTB on Buffy, because of the crossovers of characters and continued references to each other, I refuse to believe that what applies in L.A. doesn't apply a few hours south of there (or whatever direction Sunnydale is supposed to lie). So if there are TPTB on Angel, then for me, they have to exist on Buffy, too.
Or I don't know, maybe it's just my own hangups based on my religious background.
yez
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Re: Where'd you get the idea that the Scoobies -- Finn Mac Cool, 20:53:22 10/30/02 Wed
Even though the PTBs must exist in Buffy's world, they have had very little contact with the Scooby Gang, and thus don't do much to fashion their beliefs.
As for saying that someone "is Evil" rather than "he was evil": the "Evil" results because it is used to describe a creature who is evil by nature. So, on BtVS, "Evil" is also something of a state of being. Humans, since evil is a choice for them rather than their innate path in life, are almost always described as "evil" if it applies.
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Re: My take on this thorny issue -- Miss Edith, 06:33:17 10/31/02 Thu
Demons were on the earth first according to Giles in The Harvest. I remember the judge refering to the "plague of humanity" and wanting to wipe it out. So it could certainly be argued that human beings are not neceserily in the right. Most demons don't want to co-exist peacefully with us though.
In The Wish the Master says humans should be treated like the cattle they are and makers reference to humans developing mass production which he calls a truly demonic concept. I would say therefore that demons have a slightly different idea of evil than we do. Saying I'm evil seems to be a way of self-identifying almost.
Clem seems to see Buffy as more of a soldier on an opposing side rather than the hero of goodness. E.g he tells Dawn it would be a good idea for him to befriend her as she's the slayers sister and could keep Buffy off his back. I would guess that most demons see the slayer like that, an irritant to be avoided, rather than the just one in a war between good and evil
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Oops! In describing vampires, it should be "drawn to do evil" not "drawn to do good". -- Finn Mac Cool, 16:29:33 10/29/02 Tue
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Responding to Sophist -- Caroline, 14:53:36 10/29/02 Tue
Spike becoming a vampire, being occupied by a demon soul according to Joss means that he loses his moral compass. Thus, the uninhibited impulses do come through (id), they are not suppressed by conscscience (superego). As far as I can tell, the demon soul doesn't really have a personality, in fact it seems to leave the personality of the human being intact and just allows the baser impulses, previously controlled (maybe not in Liam's case but certaintly in Williams') to have domain. We can see the example of VampWillow - she became power hungry, cruel and gay, real Willow showed that potential also. If Joss said the demon soul had a personality to impose, this argument would all fall down like a deck of cards.
Also, we're talking metaphor here, so I don't see why the physical should equate so strictly. Vampires are a metaphor for unrestrained hunger, desire, id. While the id does have a role in terms of creating identity, and is certainly necessary at a certain level for survival, when not balanced by other parts of one's identity, problems result -mainly immaturity. That is what the vampires represent.
Id gives the motivation to live - the desire to eat, drink, take pleasure etc. Those things aren't intrinsically bad, they just are. It's when those desires are frustrated in some way, or we refuse to grow out of that stage that id becomes a problem. If vampires could feed without hurting humans, would they be evil and would there be a need for a slayer? That is the challenge that chippedSpike presented to slayer status quo pre-soul.
In terms of the growth of identity, accomodating one's darker impulses, containing them without harming others is an important part of learning who one is. To be unconscious of our impulses or deny they are a problem, as a vampire usually does, stymies the process of self-knowledge. Spike, through the agency of the chip, gained some consciousness about the effect of his id. He gained even more of an insight into this through his love for Buffy. And then he chose to go get a soul. Choice is important and operative here. Choice means becoming conscious, not being a victim of one obsessions and compulsions. He got back his 'moral compass' in Joss' terms, but that does not mean he lost the identity of the last 100+ years of being William. And he didn't lose the part of him that chose to become ensouled either. I don't see why his soul would negate the identity he created as a vampire. (Same goes for Liam/Angel). Soul does not equal identity.
I believe it is possible to change and transform oneself. One can become the person one wishes to be by changing what one does every day to ensure that it conforms to that person. Living and being (to me) are conscious decisions -one's desired identity is won and lost every day with a myriad of actions. Part of the reason that I find BtVS so compelling is because it shows us every episode that it is a struggle and that it is possible.
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Changing yourself or changing your behavior? -- Sara, 20:48:40 10/29/02 Tue
I just love this whole identity debate! If you change yourself to be more of the person you aspire to, are you perhaps just changing your behavior to match your ambitions and or your basic values? In that case is it really change or just a development of who you really are? (I know I say potato...)
I personally think we can only:
adapt to ourselves
learn to use aspects of our nature to our advantage
repress or hide aspects of our nature to match what we aspire to/want to show the world
encourage the parts of ourselves that we approve or or admire
but in the end we're just working with the cards that were played to us. So, when the demon inhabits someone, if his/her only awareness is based on the person's memories, is the identity just the original person with the demon's value system (or lack thereof)? William clearly thought of himself as better, more in-tune with the world around him than those who laughed at him. He pretty much says so to Cecily when he reads her his poem and is so cruelly rejected. Doesn't Spike see the world with that same feeling of greater insight, only this time with the power to treat the unworthy masses the way William really would have liked to? Just a thought.
- Sara, who has trouble changing her oil, let alone her flaws
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Re: Changing yourself or changing your behavior? -- aliera, 04:55:23 10/30/02 Wed
Everything I've read on this topic says that both the writer's and JM were trying to portray that he hadn't really changed, that underneath his love for Buffy and in spite of the glimpses of his pain was still the vampire. It was complicated by the text and even more so by JM performance (intentionally conveying the emotion the attractiveness over the text) and I think it was meant to be complicated at this stage of the show, just as the other character's have become more complex. I also believe that sending him for a soul was meant to convey that at the heart of things he was supposed to be viewed as still evil, still vampire. Of course much of this is just my perspective, my reading of the character. I see SR and his love for Buffy as the catalyst; but I also believe than underneath that was Spike's desire for a family and his disillusionment with the emptiness and stagnation of his state as a vampire. A desire for humanity for life, which may have been part of his attraction to Buffy. I'm also not sure that William or Spike really felt better than the rest. In fact after reading Drew's commentary that Rahael posted I think that it may have been quite the opposite -that his insecurity was a basic component of his personality. Drew sees the vamp persona as intentionally crafted, as Spike's masque. I agree that human's have great potential for change for the better; but, I also wonder if what is happening is more a drawing forth of the potentiality that already existed, a conscious choice to bring forth that potential. In Spike's case, he was unable draw this forth to do so without the soul. In the end, the chip was a muzzle not a substitute for the soul and that is what we were meant to understand.
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Find myself agreeing with Caroline and aliera here -- shadowkat, 06:23:08 10/30/02 Wed
Quick correction aliera - it's Doug Petrie not Drew who did commentary for FFL - that Rah so kindly posted and typed for us. Thanks Rah!!
After reading that commentary - I felt a little better, because I realized my reading of Spike is what the writers appear to have intended.
The persona of Spike is in many ways a construct, carefully pieced together over time by the vampire that William became. The vampire metaphor - is being used here both as a sexual metaphor and one for the id or the baser impulses.
Petrie states how they are showing in FFL the creation of a monster. And it is important to note that the template was a good, heartbroken man. A man who had the courage to admit he was a bad poet but was a good man. Who wanted to be a good man. The irony? When he is turned into a vampire - he moves as far away from that as he can. Or he tries to.
Starting with the change of accent. Then the name. From upper-crust British to working class - to distinquish him from Angelus who is dressed and talks like aristocracy. Then he goes after the vampires worst nightmare - this gives him Drusilla. And he gets the eyebrow scar. And becomes the monster. Then he bleaches his hair and goes for the punk look. Then kills his second slayer and gets her coat like taking a trophy and new costume. So by time Buffy first meets him, as do we - he is now the fully constructed Spike. Complete with nasty girlfriend.
Then the writers do an interesting thing. They deconstruct him. When we first meet him in School Hard - he is as far away as he can get from brokenhearted foppishly dressed (although that brown suit is hardly foppish but hey..that's ME for you.)good man bad poet William. He has a girlfriend. He has cool clothes. He is a monster, no problems smashing someone's head through glass. He's the big bad and his old
rival/mentor Angelus is the soulful guiltridden one.
And what happens? He gets put in a wheelchair. Loses Drusilla to Angelus. Angelus becomes the big bad again.
He ends up going against his evil nature and helping a slayer save the world. He loses Dru finally. Gets a chip placed in his head which causes him not to be able to do the big violence against humans and he has to once again rely on words to wreck havoc. He falls in love with a slayer who is repulsed by him - meaning uh broken heart.
And finally thrown into a situation in which he discovers that he is a monster and is horrified by it, so he sheds the trophy jacket. Gets a soul...and we end up with what we started with. William.
But William was there all along. Peel off the layers. You get the core. Which is what they've done. You see him pile them on in FFL and then you watch over the course of three seasons the layers slowly get peeled off.
Does this mean he changed? Well yes and no. No one stays completely fixed. But we also all have a core being that does not change. I think Caroline explains this concept the best. It's a difficult concept to explain or understand.
Aliera also explains it well:
"I agree that human's have great potential for change for the better; but, I also wonder if what is happening is more a drawing forth of the potentiality that already existed, a conscious choice to bring forth that potential. In Spike's case, he was unable draw this forth to do so without the soul. In the end, the chip was a muzzle not a substitute for the soul and that is what we were meant to understand."
I think this is true. It's a drawing forth of the potential that already existed before. All the chip did was muzzle the baser impulses, which allowed to some extent the core personality to peek through the cracks. The chip was wearing down like a drip of water on a tough shell the monstrous persona William the Bloody had created. This did not mean that William wasn't still a monster - all it did was allow the man inside the monster, the core personality a chance to start to break through all the layers he'd created.
This season, I believe the writers are attempting to explore the potential at the core of the characters and what that potential reflects on us and world at large.
Anya/Aud/Anyanka - the girl who did want to help people at her core, but got mislead by trying to fit in or belong.
I love Dawn's lines -"Just act like everyone else." Such a perfect metaphor for Anya and what do we do when we can't quite get it. When we want to be important. To matter.
And how we deal with those insecurities.
Willow/Darkwillow - who is terrified of being DarkWillow yet also worried about being just Willow. Willow who like Anyanka wants people to like her. Wants to be loved. Wants to be important. Wants to be powerful.
Xander/SuaveXander - same thing...
Spike/William/Mr. Bill - same thing
As we grow up we try on different costums, personas, either to get away from what we are or to draw it out more.
Right now i think we're watching the characters on both shows struggle with that. Do I draw on my strengths and accept my weaknesses? OR do I put on customs, run and hide
from who I am, try to become something drastically different (as Spike attempted in the past or Willow did)?
Trying on costumes, personas, etc are coping skills. Spike is the coping skill -William selected to handle being a vampire, heartbreak, etc.
DarkWillow is the coping skill that Willow selected.
Anyanka is the coping skill that Anya selected.
And we all know how that turned out. Now each character is faced with the fact that they have to change the coping mechanism. The one they chose? Isn't working any more.
And choosing to deal with their insecurities - by either hiding from them or putting on the big bad act doesn't work.
Last year the writers deconstructed the characters. Smashed their masques. Some of that smashing passed over to this year. Now I'm curious to see what is revealed beneath those masques.
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Construction of identity, Pavlovian dogs and choice -- Caroline, 06:58:11 10/30/02 Wed
This feels like deja vu because I'm sure we've discussed this before but it's so much fun that I don't mind! I remember writing a post a while back on the manner in which Spike deliberately constructed his identity and when I read Doug Petrie's voice-over of FFL (Thanks Rah, you are a queen, Caroline says) I'm incredibly happy because that is the way it seems Joss and co intended. I think after the rejection by Cecily, William was seeking something. Drusilla saw that and turned him. Once a vampire, he deliberately constructed a new persona in opposition to William - lower-class accent, prone to violence etc. He was definitely overcompensating for his previous wussiness. The behaviour modification of the chip (I wonder if the writers meant some Skinnerian mouse or Pavlovian dog sort of analogy here - very modern in terms of stimulus/response to modify behaviour) and his desire for union, which was not destroyed by the loss of his soul, led Spike to explore even more facets of his identity. The conscious ensoulment is important because, even while muzzled, to use aliera's terminology, Spike comprehended the undesirability of his current moral state and set of values. That is a profound statement of transformation. I am starting to really appreciate the depth of manwitch's argument here about the 'modern' nature of Spike soul.
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Re: Pavlovian dogs (musical spoiler for upcoming episode) -- ponygirl, 08:31:01 10/30/02 Wed
Great posts Caroline, shadowkat and aliera! It's interesting how much of William/Spike's choices center around the quest or the challenge. He's looking for "it": the perfect word, the heart of the most beautiful lady in the room, the biggest kill, love, a soul. He always seems to believe in the prize, but getting it causes him nothing but problems. Every challenge he conquers seems to bring him closer to his own destruction. It never satisfies. He kills a Slayer, then he wants to kill another. He gets Buffy for a time, and it only causes them both grief. He gets a soul and it destroys his mind. Now he seems to be looking for forgivensss.
Not much else to add, except that I read that Aimee Mann is going to be performing on the Nov. 19 episode. I am not spoiled for this episode (for I am strong and will not click on the tempting Spoiler Trollops link no matter how it calls to me) so I don't know if it's a Spike-centric ep. but the song she is performing is Pavlov's Bell. It's a great CD btw, highly recommended.
Pavlov's Bell
Oh Mario -- sit here by the window
Stay here 'til we reach Idaho
And when we go
Hold my hand on take-off
Tell me what I already know
That we can't talk about it
No, we can't talk about it
Because nobody knows
That's how I nearly fell
Trading clothes
And ringing Pavlov's bell
History shows
There's not a chance in hell -- but --
Oh Mario -- We're only to Ohio
It's kinda getting harder to breathe
I won't let it show --
I'm all about denial --
But can't denial let me believe?
That we could talk about it
But we can't talk about it
Because nobody knows
That's how I nearly fell
Trading clothes
And ringing Pavlov's bell
History shows -- but rarely shows it well
Well, well, well --
Oh Mario -- why if this is nothing
I'm finding it so hard to dismiss
If you're what I need,
Then only you can save me
So come on baby -- give me the fix
And let's just talk about it
I've got to talk about it
Because nobody knows
That's how I nearly fell
Trading clothes
And ringing Pavlov's bell
History shows --
Like it was show and tell
So tell me Mario
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That is so cool! -- Caroline, 08:58:01 10/30/02 Wed
Thanks for the musical spoiler ponygirl. I wonder if I will date myself if I say I was a fan of Aimee Mann's from when she was in Til Tuesday. And the lyrics are so prescient. This must be a Spike/Buffy heavy ep because the lyrics are so relevant to them right now. And it also fits in with the Montressor reference - being trapped and dying- and the Slaughterhouse 5 reference - being trapped by fate. This show is too good.
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Seconding Caroline's comments. Cool! -- shadowkat, 09:29:30 10/30/02 Wed
And am tempted to get Aimee Mann CD. Love those lyrics.
And they are Spike/William to a T. It also fits Anya and
Willow. These three characters are really being paralleled this season.
"Because nobody knows
That's how I nearly fell
Trading clothes
And ringing Pavlov's bell
History shows --
Like it was show and tell"
I nearly fell into darkness - notice how the costumes change on Spike and Willow and Anya - both Willow and Spike go all black. Spike when he returns tries on new clothes and even states "just a costume" "didn't work".
Such a fitting lyric. Don't know what the episode is about either but I'm very happy to know that song is playing in the background. ME does a good job of selecting songs IMHO.
And of course the whole Pavlov's bell reference - so Spike
and Buffy.
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And I have tickets to see her next month! Woohoo! -- ponygirl, 11:04:21 10/30/02 Wed
If anyone wants to have a listen, the songs from Aimee Mann's new album are up at http://www.aimeemann.com/home.html. I've been listening to the CD pretty much nonstop since I bought it a couple weeks ago, it's one of my at-work put on the headphones and drown out the office CDs. The whole album would make a lovely soundtrack to BtVS circa s6-7.
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I thought it would help -- Sophist, 09:23:00 10/30/02 Wed
if I found the earlier discussions in the archives. They were on June 17 (shadowkat's essay on the demon soul) and June 19 (beginning with the Willow/Dark Phoenix post).
I agree with much of what you said. The biggest distinction I would draw is this: the demon soul which creates/is the vampire does add something (not sure what) to the identity of the creature. It follows, therefore, that Spike does not have the same identity as William and that the re-souled Spike is different still. I think you'd agree with this, but I'm not sure.
On the more general question of identity for all of us, I do think we create it in large part. But I also think, as Sara says, we start with the cards we're dealt. That limits the changes we can make.
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Re: I thought it would help -- Arethusa, 09:49:28 10/30/02 Wed
I think the demon brings out and develops the darkness inside the human, something everyone has and few acknowledge. We hear William make the "I prefer not to dwell on such ugly things" line in Fool For Love, and we contrast it with what we know of Spike, who cultivated the darkness inside. The biggest difference between William and post-Spike William is that he now knows just what he is capable of, and remembers what it felt like to commit such terrible acts. He's been changed by both one hundred years of experience and interaction with the world, and an understanding of the ugliness inside himself that most people are spared.
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I agree -- Sophist, 10:02:57 10/30/02 Wed
It's the process of "bringing out and developing the darkness within the human" that, to me, makes the demon identity different from the human (again, I'm not sure how much different that means). When the soul is restored (and putting aside metaphor here), the soul now has to struggle against the demon's attempts to bring on the darkness. That gives the souled vamp a yet different identity than either the original human or the the unsouled vamp. JMHO.
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Re:Makes complete sense. Hasn't everyone been kicked out of school? -- Deb, 23:05:29 10/29/02 Tue
It's called "trying on roles" and in normal adolescence (10-24 years of age) don't we all take at least a short jaunt on the wild side, one way or another, or in several ways? If we don't, then we are prone to an identity crisis somewhere along the way later in life. We all have our dark sides. Some people just split from theirs and try to cage it so nobody ever sees it. Sometimes the dark side comes in very handy.
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Re: Has Spike changed? (spoilers for 6.22 and 7.1) -- Rufus, 02:28:05 10/30/02 Wed
As Spike grows - he becomes more and more like William, and less like the vampire that infected him or the twisted version of William. The soul allows him to get back to who he really is at his core and we've only seen glimpses of that person.
Yes, glimpses...and some of them not altogether flattering...specially the comment about "dark ugly business" in Fool for Love....he thought that the dirty byproducts of living such as murder were best left to the constabulary. So, was he just sheltered or did he have a slight streak of yellow in him? We won't know because he was rejected shortly after that statement. Along with the "good man" will surface some of his imperfections...making him even more fun to watch.
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Re: Has Spike changed? (spoilers for 6.22 and 7.1) -- Blood Luvin Girl, 03:33:16 10/30/02 Wed
Yes, glimpses...and some of them not altogether flattering...specially the comment about "dark ugly business" in Fool for Love....he thought that the dirty byproducts of living such as murder were best left to the constabulary. So, was he just sheltered or did he have a slight streak of yellow in him? We won't know because he was rejected shortly after that statement. Along with the "good man" will surface some of his imperfections...making him even more fun to watch.
He could have just been trying to make himself sound less vulgar and more gentalmanly, so his comment might not have even been his real opinion. Remember he was trying to impress Cecily at the time and might have thought she wouldn't approve of such talk.
Unless they decide to show us some more flashbacks of his past before he was turned, we will never really have any idea of what he was like as a human.
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Re: Has Spike changed? (spoilers for 6.22 and 7.1) -- Miss Edith, 03:45:03 10/30/02 Wed
Th pary guests were just indulging in idle gossip which William dismissed as an unsuitable topic for conversation. If Cecily needed his protection from thugs William may have jumped in? It's hard to guess how how would have reacted based on his response to gossip at a party. It does indicate that he was a sensitive sort though that did avoid thinking of violence and ugliness.
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Re: Has Spike changed? (spoilers for 6.22 and 7.1) -- Rufus, 19:29:37 10/30/02 Wed
It does indicate that he was a sensitive sort though that did avoid thinking of violence and ugliness.
I agree with that. His preoccupation with things centered around the mind would leave him a bit detached from the real world....add in the fact that I do feel he was somewhat sheltered, the persona he took on was a repudiation of all things he once was.....remembering his comment to Angelus about "the frilly cuffs and collars set" he once belonged to.
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Re: Has Spike changed? (spoilers for 6.22 and 7.1) -- Dariel, 18:53:06 10/30/02 Wed
...he thought that the dirty byproducts of living such as murder were best left to the constabulary. So, was he just sheltered or did he have a slight streak of yellow in him?
I don't know if he was sheltered; seems more like he preferred to live in denial about the dark, ugly things in life. Which, of course, is wonderfully ironic, since he soon becomes one of those dark, ugly things!
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Re: Has Spike changed? Spoiler 7.1 -- Deb, 23:34:56 10/29/02 Tue
I don't think Spike has changed at all, but William has. I also belive that we really don't have a way of knowing just how William has changed since we do not know the William that ran out into the street and into the waiting bite of Dru. That William was not the same William who walked into that house and then was totally humiliated by his "friends."
On to something else here. In 7.1 rerun tonight, during the last scene, the big monstery looking guy (Dont' know who he was because before my time.) referred to William/Spike and "No. 17" This was after the comment the mayor made about Spike/William thinking that getting back his soul would make him "His own man." Does anyone have any clue what that scene was trying to say?
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The "Hostile 17" reference -- Dariel, 19:02:02 10/30/02 Wed
The big, "monstery looking guy" was Adam, the Big Bad from season 4. He was sort of part human, part demon, and part machine. Spike briefly joined his side in the fight against the Initiative and against the Scoobies.
Hostile 17 was the designation given Spike by the Initiative, which implanted his chip. As in hostile, demon #17. Referring to Spike as "17" could be interpreted as an attempt to demoralize him, emphasizing his "evil thingness" as against his reconnection with his human soul.
About Halfrek (spoiler for Selfless) -- PepTech, 10:03:44 10/29/02 Tue
Evidently they're not going to go anywhere with the Cecily/Halfrek connection. There was a time when it seemed like they would - I seem to remember a flicker of recognition between them, or was it a "William"?.... but apparently ME decided it wasn't going to bear fruit. Unless someone has some other theory :-)
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ME likes to torture us in many ways... -- Caroline, 11:11:54 10/29/02 Tue
Read the Fool for Love commentary given by Rahael, below. Doug Petrie explains that the writers didn't have anything to do with the casting of Kali Rocha as Halfrek and just decided to have fun with it at Buffy's birthday in season 6. There was no 'Cecily returns' plan. Nice 'in' joke but that's all.
I'm sure the writers who frequent the boards got a huge kick out of it.
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Re: ME likes to torture us in many ways... (spoilers to present) -- yez, 11:42:43 10/29/02 Tue
Thanks, I was wondering, too.
I've really enjoyed the Halfrek character -- thought the actress did a wonderful job. Nice comedic flair and timing. I'm going to miss the character.
yez
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Re: About Halfrek (spoiler for Selfless) -- luvthistle1, 12:56:58 10/29/02 Tue
Maybe, There will be a back story on it. I believe Cecily/Halfrek are the same person as was Aud and Anya. Halfrek might had been a vengeance demon when William meet her. But her vengeances was direct it men, it was directed at parents. maybe , William was in the way or maybe some way indirectly she was trying to take vengeance on William mother or father. Just a thought. I could not understand why they would have them recognize each other in " older and far and away only to drop the story line. I think it will be work in some where down the line.
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Re: About Halfrek (spoiler for Selfless) -- luvthistle1, 12:58:34 10/29/02 Tue
Maybe, There will be a back story on it. I believe Cecily/Halfrek are the same person as was Aud and Anya. Halfrek might had been a vengeance demon when William meet her. But her vengeances was direct it men, it was directed at parents. maybe , William was in the way or maybe some way indirectly she was trying to take vengeance on William mother or father. Just a thought. I could not understand why they would have them recognize each other in " older and far and away only to drop the story line. I think it will be work in some where down the line.
Cordy and "The Greatest Love of All" (AtS 4.4 spoilers) -- Rob, 11:35:02 10/29/02 Tue
I was just wondering what everyone thinks of the "Cordy" amnesia development, and where the writers are going with it. To start off with, I must admit, I did have some reservations, because I was worried that it would be too much of a retread of a similar situation to what happened in "Halloween" or "Tabula Rasa" on "Buffy"...ya know, Buffy forgets who she is, freaks out when she sees vamps and demons...And Cordy freaking out at Angel's vamp face is very similar to how SouthernBelle!Buffy freaked out seeing it in the earlier episode.
But, after viewing the episode, I really do think it worked very well, because it can add to so much more fun emotional angst with the whole Connor/Cordy pairing, which, although I'm an "Angel" newbie, I think is just inspired. At the same time, though, I'm not against an Angel/Cordy pairing, although many people here seemed to be. From what I've seen of their scenes together, I always thought they had a great deal of chemistry..actually, I found it to be even more evident in this episode than ever before. Maybe because Angel couldn't have her, and the longing was greater.
Speaking of which, azazel wondered what the significance of Cordy singing "The Greatest Love of All" again was, and I thought about it, and I think I've come up with an answer. Cordy first sang that in "The Puppet Show," the episode where Buffy, Xander, and Willow did that infamous performance of Oedipus Rex at the school talent show. And that reference, of course, ties into the possible Oedipal-drama-in-the-works currently going on on the show.
I personally think ME has pulled off what has become a specialty of theirs--introduce a possibly cliched situation and turn it on its head, for example: The arrival of Dawn--where with most shows the addition of a young, spunky character out of nowhere is a failed ploy to keep up the show's ratings, whereas in "Buffy" it completely revitalized the show and made for one of its strongest seasons to date. Character with amnesia is a typical soap-opera sitch, but here it really is working, because it keeps the angst up. Angel's love finally returns, but cannot remember him, and worse, fears him, and instead draws closer to his son, whom she had been a sort of surrogate mother to. Wow, what a messed-up family!
And the most evil aspect of the amnesia (grr aargh at the writers! lol) is that now it's going to take even longer to figure out what the heck happened with Cordy in the first place. Where was she? Why is she back? Until she gets her memory back, we won't know. And knowing ME, this seems like the type of major plot development that might take quite a while to work itself out. Remember, in the fifth season of "Buffy," we didn't learn all the details of Glory/Ben until the penultimate episode! I only hope it doesn't take that long to find out what happened with Cordy...and what's going on with this "slouching towards Bethlehem" prophecy...Do you think it's going to tie in with the apocalypsy-Hellmouth-has-teeth-thingy happening on "Buffy" this year?
Rob
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Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston (OT to the max) -- neaux, 11:46:01 10/29/02 Tue
Here is a completely off-the-wall scenario of the use of "The Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston.
Whether she wrote the song or not.. I do not know.. but I have resources that tell me when she first performed this song, she was indeed dating her BAD BOY Husband Bobby Brown. Does Cordelia long for her Bad Boy love Angel/Angellus??
Maybe Cordy needs to start weed smoking and neglecting her children like Whitney.. does that mean neglecting Connor???
Yes the comparison is sad, but my mind is warped. =P
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my sources lied -- neaux, 12:14:35 10/29/02 Tue
eh... turns out The greatest love of All was 1985 and she married B. Brown in 1992.. so I myself am doubting my sources. I think they were off abit. :(
oh well.. regardless whenever I hear that song I think of Whitney and Bobby and laugh.
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Well, you'll have to be punished now. Where's the wet kleenex? -- LadyStarlight, 13:33:29 10/29/02 Tue
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Re: Cordy and "The Greatest Love of All" (AtS 4.4 spoilers) -- yez, 12:08:34 10/29/02 Tue
Thanks for pointing out the song and play reference from that BtVS ep -- very clever. Hopefully, we don't see a return of the personality traits of that early Cordy -- even though I haven't really been loving the Cordy of late.
My brain tells me that ME is good at turning clichés on their heads, as you point out, but I also have to admit to some big and festering reservations about the amnesia development. I don't know why, but I've been feeling like the show has been marching in place for a while now, since about mid-way through last season. It's weird -- I know that a lot of *things* have happened, but it just feels like it's not going anywhere, or at least not going anywhere at a perceptible pace (for this viewer).
Charisma Carpenter's performances have felt off somehow, too, or maybe it's the writing for Cordy, I don't know. And this development just seems too forced, like they ran out of new and interesting tortures to inflict on Angel and crew and are trying to freshen up the very tired amnesia device out of desperation or something.
I mean, misery loses its impact or interest at any rate when it's a constant onslaught and there's not a moment of peace to disarm you before the next wave hits.
As to where Cordy's been, etc., I'm finding that I'm beginning to not care much. I thought the "ascension" was pretty ridiculous to begin with.
I know: oh me of little faith...
yez
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Re: Cordy and "The Greatest Love of All" (AtS 4.4 spoilers) -- Zilla, 13:22:24 10/29/02 Tue
I tend to agree with you. The whole amnesia thing seems to be a case of "what do we do next" syndrome. I actually am beginning to miss the old Cordy, even the Cordy from BtVS who was a spoiled brat. The whole ascension thing was ridiculous....come on you can't tell me that the PTB don't know what she used to be like. Granted her character has developed over the years but she seems to be less interesting and it almost seems like Charisma Carpenter is thinking the same thing.
And please don't tell me the big bad apocolypse will now involve Angel, Cordy and Connor. Maybe Cordy will turn out to be the Big Bad on AtS this year. now that would be a twist:)
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Learning to not overthink is the greatest virtue of all.... -- Juliet, 16:58:05 10/29/02 Tue
That would kick some major ass.
Anyone else here overanalyzing the song theme? That maybe the characters (cordy/angel/connor) need to learn who they are and love themselves before they can have these relationships?
Maybe I just need to go watch some Buffy now...
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Re: Cordy's Amnesia (spoilers for AtS S4) -- yabyumpan, 13:20:24 10/29/02 Tue
"At the same time, though, I'm not against an Angel/Cordy pairing, although many people here seemed to be. From what I've seen of their scenes together, I always thought they had a great deal of chemistry"
Thank you Rob, me too, I don't feel so alone here now :-) and welcome to the world of AtS.
As for the Amnesia thing...Some theories based on future spoilers, so avert your eyes now if you don't want to be spoiled
I think it's possible that TPTSY sent her back sans memory, not because she helped Angel in last weeks ep but because she's actually got a larger role to play in the comming events. We know from last week that The Beast is comming, we also know from an interview with Jeff Bell http://www.stranger-things.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5370 that the gang PURPOSLEY release Angelus to fight the Beast (don't know why although it seems to be a 'Haniball Lecter' thing), it also seems clear that Connor is probably 'The Destroyer'. We also have in 'Offspring' last year, Cordy being the last person Darla feeds from before she 'gives birth' the Connor , there were theories going around last year that this in some way 'connected' her to Connor.(bare with me folks). We had a fair amount of talk in STB from Cordy about her being a 'spy' and while this was probably a poke at 'Alias', it could also be a bit of forshadowing. There has also been talk about the comming 'Apocalypse'.
Ok, for the 'theories', I think it's possible that TPTSY sent her back with no memories but with 'implanted' special connection to Connor, this would make more sense of her staying with Connor and not at the hotel. Yes, Connor didn't lie to her but would she really feel safer with a 16 year old in a place where she has already been attacked than at the hotel with Angel and Gunn? It's possible that Cordy was sent back either to 'Protect' Connor from the Beast and/or Angelus or to destroy the 'Destroyer'. It seems, one way or another, she's going to come between Angel and Connor as well as Connor being a barrier between her and Angel. If she had come back with her memories it's highly unlikely that she would have chosen Connor over Angel or would be a party to Angelus being released, cage or not. I think we're looking at a showdown between Angel/Angelus and Connor with Cordy being the deciding factor in the outcome.
The other possibility is that she may be the one to bridge the gap between Angel and Connor so they can fight the Beast together, although I would say that's unlikely given the present situation. I do think the whole C/C ship thing is a huge misdirection and that there's something much more sinister afoot.
Ok, rambling and probably fanwank, I've obviously been thinking waaay to much about this, but it's fun to speculate ;-)
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Just an up-front warning. Future spoilers above : ) -- Masq, 13:57:38 10/29/02 Tue
Who isn't looking!
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Sorry Masq, I thought I made that clear by putting S4 and not just the eps, my bad :-( -- yabyumpan, 14:13:22 10/29/02 Tue
Miles to go? -- darrenK, 13:47:02 10/29/02 Tue
There's a solid chance that at some point in the dark and murky past someone noticed this and there was a thread, a discussion and now it's just common knowledge. I have no idea. But on the chance that no one had noticed, I decided I had to post this.
It comes from page 3 of the 1987 printing of the Bantam Classic edition of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
I was a little stunned when I read it:
"He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness..."
Can such a thing be coincedence? Was Joss drawing a deliberate parallel between Raskolnikov and Faith, commentary on the spiritual cost of violence?. Or is this a meta-commentary on Joss's own state of mind as he wrote these episodes?
Joss has very publicly put the 730 discussions to bed by saying it was roughly the number of days between Graduation Day 2 and The Gift, but he never commented on his method of communicating it or gave any hints that the dialogue itself held an allusion, but then again, if he had, maybe it would have been dismissed as pretentious or overly complex. Instead he left it as a 'gift' for anyone who found it.
This is how the paragraph finishes:
"...Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this 'hideous' dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a 'rehearsal' of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent."
If this was previously discovered and debated I would love to know when so that I can look for it in the archives.
dK
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Re: Miles to go? -- CW, 16:07:57 10/29/02 Tue
I don't know if it's more than a coincidence. Raskolnikov kills on purpose to prove to himself he something more than just an average man, thinking such a person will surely get away with it. His conscience and his friendship/love of Sonya convince him to admit what he's done. Faith kills the mayor's aide completely by accident, but refuses to admit responsibility, because it would be a sign of weakness. Eventually, her hatred of her conscience drives her over to the friendship/love of the mayor.
There certainly are common elements, but they don't compare or contrast very well.
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Re: Miles to go? -- Random, 16:53:54 10/29/02 Tue
Improbable, but, speaking as a major Dostoevski (ha! even spell it "...ki" instead of "...ky") fan, I think it's a totally neat idea. Never caught that me-self, and I've re-read "Crime and Punishment" at least twice since season 3. Run with the idea. Since when does improbability have any relevance on what we talk about? After all, Raskolnikov's journey through the vagaries of nihilism and the problem of morality does mirror Faith's in one very vital aspect: the supposition that certain people are beyond both law and morality. In "Bad Girls" and "Consequences," we are treated to a very lucid, if rather distasteful, explication of Faith's world-view, i.e. might makes right and some people are just plain superior to others. Perhaps Faith's killing of Deputy Mayor Finch was accidental, but it's not the act, it's the reaction that's important. She reacts in a manner consistent with her world-view. She doesn't care because she rationalizes that she has, if not the right, at least the license, to kill. Whereas Xander and Willow put a stop to that nonsense summarily in "Ted," Faith has no such moral grounding. Is this so different from Raskolnikov's stated aim? to kill without remorse, as Angel notes, is to feel like a god. And Faith certainly milks that precept for all it's worth. She doesn't need a reason -- as her dialogue with Professor Worth makes clear -- and this is entirely a function of her own self-perception.
Yes, Raskolnikov is redeemed. The love a good woman and all that rot. But so, too, is Faith. When, in "Who Are You?", Riley treats her as he would treat Buffy, we begin to see the first traces of how love and human empathy can work their magic on anyone. One could argue -- and I will argue thus -- that her night with Riley was the turning point. She's clearly upset and off-balance, but that is the beginning of her transition, that's what makes her begin to doubt herself. When Angel saved her, he merely performed a role that she imposed upon him, a role that he never would have had a chance to perform had not Riley started her on the road to L.A.
Gee, that was fun. Wish I could write more, but it's time for Buffy. I hate the way BtVS does re-runs approximately every five episodes. It enough to drive a breathlessly-yearning Buffyfan crazy.
The many faces of the heart (spoilers for Selfless) -- Etrangere, 15:11:51 10/29/02 Tue
It's funny I was talking about Spike's madness troubles lately as a confusion between his various personas. I'm beginning that this issue, the identity as what we present to the world and as our own inner being, will be one of the big theme of S7.
Dawn describes this big necessity of wearing a mask of protection in society. "In the end we are all who we are", said Giles in Lessons.
Sometimes we often defines ourselves in terms of roles, of fonctions. What do you do, what do you work in, is one of the first question you ask people you meet. Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer or is she Buffy the counsellor ? Today, just like Anya's "I am vengeance", she was reducing herself to what she had to do "I am the law".
Sometimes, the definitions are about the one we relate to. The one we love. I'm her mother, her sister. I'm his wife. Anya used to define herself, her identity, around the one she loved, Olaf and Xander, and both times, when she was betrayed, her whole identity scrumble to let only a demonic ID surviving. Spike did that too, define himself around the one he loved. (Well, Spike's built up identity might have been more complexe than that but each times the one he loved had a great importance to it) but when he betrayed his loves (Drusilla and Buffy, not sure this could apply to Cecily), he had to reinvente himself a whole new identity. Actually it's funny the ressemblance between this episode and Fool For Love, the point about all things done and said through your life, we are back to the beginning and nothing changed. You still don't really know who you are.
Change and how it related with the self, a complex subject. Every time we change, we die a little. Surely we could consider that Spike died when he aquired a soul, because he became another. Yet he is still the same.
In the end we are all who we are.
"That's not me anymore", says Willow, yet we just witnessed that the identity that was Black Willow is still burried, not so very deeply, into her self. Are we onions ? Are we just layers and layers of faces and faces until we reach the heart of the identity ?
Well, what is the heart ? I'm not sure if I agree with shadowkat's theory that last year was all about spirit (then why all the hands references ?) and the previous one all about mind, but surely this year is very much about heart.
What I wonder is what that Heart stands for me. It's not as easy to determine as it seems. It's certainly not only about love, because the Hand stands already much about connections with people. There's also this thing about courage, the kind of courage that Xander demonstatred in the end of Grave. Loyalty and unconditionnal love (OK, so maybe there's some love in it). But it's the kind of ties to people that is selfless. The heart is hurt when you're humiliated. The heart is hurt when you've been cheated on.
But again, i'm striked how this episode related to Spike as the Heart than Xander (maybe I'm just obsessed :) A party where someone has the heart broken by the person one loved, and the party goers humiliating that person... a party where those party goers probably probably got their wish too of having a railroad spike going through their head than listening more bloody poetry. And ofcourse there is the way the episode sneakily ask wether the fact that it was just a "game" (AYW : games ? You're the one playing games !") means deserving cruel punishment.
And with Spike, we are with the danger of the heart, the danger of unruled feelings and wild passions.
ANYANKA: I grant wishes. It's all inside the girls and I just bring it out
HALFREK: Yes i'm sure this was what she had in mind
ANYANKA: Well I don't know about her mind, but it was in her heart. Besides while she was ready to explode all we did was give a little push
So when we are afraid of this power of the heart, we hide it away behind walls, we hide into the closet. "I take it back, I take it back", as if denial could do anything about it.
Hiding parts of ourselves into separate room, divide ourselves.
That's still where we are. The shattered personnas of Spike; Willow's dealing with her Black Willow personality, Buffy in white and Buffy in black. The same person, the same identity, only seen through different eyeballs.
Or maybe it's only an "Impersonation", badly played and thus only deserving to be thrown vegetables to as you would to a bad actor !
So is it than the heart must be reaped out so as to change/become someone ? (Certainly, sticking a sword through Angel's heart was a big part of Buffy's becoming, Anya seemed to awaken to a new life after Buffy put that blade through her chest, and certainly Spike became someone new with a soul put through his chest !)
But as Anya said in her song, maybe sometimes loosing your heart is not loosing at all, but gaining something much more big. "For goodwill and the sense of accomplishment that stems from giving of yourself to others"
Accomplishment... is that not a word we tie the building of self ?
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Yet another beautiful post - thank you! -- Caroline, 15:25:40 10/29/02 Tue
I agree with you in particular about Willow - by denying parts of herself, she remains locked into her current identity and cannot expand and move beyond. She refuses to let die the identity of little innocent good Willow when we all know that as well as this Willow there is a cruel, power hungry and jealous Willow that is just as much her as the nice side of her. Buffy is doing the same - she has denied the parts of her that Spike represents. She has not examined any of her motivation behind her relationship with Spike in season 6. She sought orgasm - the little death - as a substitute for the process of grieving and mourning and rebirth of identity that she should have gone through after her resurrection. She projected all the bad stuff onto Spike and said that stuff is not me. Which is why I admire Anya and Spike so much right now. The don't deny their previous badness and are willing to sacrifice themselves to atone. In terms of identity growth and self-knowledge, they are further along the path.
I love how this post is put together. Thank you.
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And yours is beautiful too Caroline -- alcibiades, 20:11:30 10/29/02 Tue
Buffy is doing the same - she has denied the parts of her that Spike represents. She has not examined any of her motivation behind her relationship with Spike in season 6. She sought orgasm - the little death - as a substitute for the process of grieving and mourning and rebirth of identity that she should have gone through after her resurrection. She projected all the bad stuff onto Spike and said that stuff is not me. Which is why I admire Anya and Spike so much right now. The don't deny their previous badness and are willing to sacrifice themselves to atone. In terms of identity growth and self-knowledge, they are further along the path.
I believe this concept of being further along the path of identity growth and self-knowledge was symbolically represented very clearly in Beneath You in the Church scene.
Spike starts far behind Buffy -- approaches her from behind, from the back, the way he approached her all last year -- then he half circles her and leads the way forward to the cross.
I believe symbolically this represents that he is now further along the way, though having started at a much lower level than she.
As for Anya and Xander, Anya has now taken responsibility for her deeds and renounced them, but Xander curiously is shown as not fully owning his bad unintentional deeds in the flashback to the song when he mumbles all he wanted was a happy ending -- that caused deaths in Sunnydale, but he has never seemed to realize the cost in lives of the shortcut he wanted in any conscious way.
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I hadn't thought of it that way. -- Deeva, 21:56:52 10/29/02 Tue
That Buffy was projecting herself onto Spike and rejecting that part of her/Spike. When Buffy says that she can never trust Spike enough to love him, she's saying the same of herself (at least this appilied in S6). How could she trust herself if she repeatedly turned to the one person who, technically, represented all that she fought against?
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Re: Agree, beautiful post -- Deb, 00:57:18 10/30/02 Wed
Speaking as one who was forced to die just a little during a code blue, I can say with with "knowing" that a part of me died that day, but only after I had to face the truth that that part was me. It was the adult, "Me, Me, Me, I want, I want, I want" part. The part that had not experienced the "magic," but was ruthlessly pursuing the "American Dream." What I was left with was an innocence that didn't compute with the people who had known me. All I ever heard for a couple of years was: "Why can't you just be like you used to be?" Well, it's because that person died for the most part. What returned was quite similiar to a newborn, and I most definitely see myself in "Spike/William." I just wanted inner quite, peace, rest but everything was just so loud and everyone had expectations of me that were totally unrealistic. Worst of all, being out and about with people was the lonliest feeling of all. We all keep our "space" and put up these flimsy psyhic walls that can be seen though, and everyone's mind is so full and cluttered with thoughts, images, ditty's, feelings, fears, pain, anger. It's like standing in the middle of a raging storm with no shelter. The people it hurts the most to be around are the people that you loved and loved you because of the larger emotional investment that had been made before the death. When I see Spike/William crouching with his hands and forearms over his ears and sides of his head, I think "Oh God, I know that feeling. Just make the world go away so I can have some peace for just one moment." It's not something that anyone can really help you through, other than making sure you eat, sleep, etc. That was 14 years ago, but I still have moments when it rushes back, and I'm in that same place of being, and it feels just like hell.
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Re: Agree, beautiful post -- Rahael, 02:48:17 10/30/02 Wed
Very interesting post - I like the bit about standing in a storm without shelter - very evocative. What's a code blue?
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Re: Code Blue -- Deb, 06:01:06 10/30/02 Wed
Technically, a heart attack, which just means that my heart stopped due to "profound allergic shock." I was told I was allergic to the radioactive iodine used in an x-ray. I was
"gone" for three minutes, but for me, it felt endless.
I understand Buffy's feelings about being yanked out of heaven last season and wondering if she was in hell, but I can't help but to wonder what William feels about "returning" to his body and sharing it with a vampire,
or was it a possession where William was always present and sharing custody of body with the vamp Spike? Does the show ever make this clear one way or another? Either way would be totally devastating I would think. Somehow when vamps say they like the fact that they are now vampires makes me wonder if the original personality is present but warped.
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Re: Code Blue -- luna, 08:43:41 10/30/02 Wed
Thaks for letting us know about the way it really is-that must have been hard to write, but you really made it clear. Your description of coming back sounded so much like Buffy last season, and Spike now.
I have no specific evidence for this, but it looks to me as if William was pretty much out of the picture once Spike took over, but returned when he got his soul back--hence the different hair, voice, etc, and the Spike/William dialogues, esp. in BY, but also starting when Williams says there's just the three of them (him, Buffy, and Spike, I thought) in the basement in Lessons.
But the gruesome possibility of William as a silent witness to Spike's horrors is certainly there.
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sounds at least as much like buffy last season as like spike this season... -- anom, 09:53:15 10/30/02 Wed
...especially these parts:
"I just wanted inner quite, peace, rest but everything was just so loud and everyone had expectations of me that were totally unrealistic. Worst of all, being out and about with people was the lonliest feeling of all."
"The people it hurts the most to be around are the people that you loved and loved you because of the larger emotional investment that had been made before the death."
I think I can speak for the entire board in saying I'm glad you didn't stay dead, even if it was hard afterwards.
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Beautiful post -- Etrangere, 10:14:51 10/30/02 Wed
And I hope you won't feel alone, but in a quiet, warm, and serein place here.
I never died, but sometimes I feel the same as you describe when I'm in the middle of loud people arguing.
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Re: Yet another beautiful post - thank you! -- Etrangere, 10:06:17 10/30/02 Wed
About Willow, this imagery of the girl locked in the closet... reminds of Die Hard, where Willow hid herself, with Cordelia, until way after the vampires were gone in a closet. And also there's the imagery of "going out of the closet" that shadowkat brillantly underlines in her Restless essay. And another jump of idea, the imagery of being wall the wall, that is in Restless (Joyce) is strikingly similar to the one that is in Die Hard (Joyce speaking to Buffy through holes made by vampires)
About Anya and Spike, yes, I agree, they have the strongest emotionnal courage. It's something I admire, true honesty, the lack of hypocrisis (and here we're back into the theater metaphores). Ofcourse I think the Heart relates strongly to emotionnal courage.
I loved your post, than you :)
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Re: Yet another beautiful post - thank you! -- Ete, 10:33:26 10/30/02 Wed
"reminds of Die Hard, where Willow hid herself, with Cordelia, until way after the vampires were gone in a closet. "
School Hard, of course, sorry :)
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Re: The many faces of the heart (spoilers for Selfless) -- Rufus, 02:21:53 10/30/02 Wed
That's still where we are. The shattered personnas of Spike; Willow's dealing with her Black Willow personality, Buffy in white and Buffy in black. The same person, the same identity, only seen through different eyeballs.
The dance that Buffy and Spike had been doing was facinating because both were in the process of rejecting parts of themselves yet finding the rejected parts interesting in another form. Buffy while rejecting Spike as a demon, was still attracted to him, her calling and his tendancy to kill people stopped her from going further in Fool for Love. She also saw a bit of the monster in herself that could only be exorcised by many rounds of kick the Spike. Spike became what he was by rejecting the romantic inside. He didn't want to be the good guy when he could be sooooooo Bad. Yet in Buffy he was attracted to her heroic qualities as much as by her looks. He prized his monster qualities because they got him noticed....what will everyone see now?
Now what do the both of them do? They have the baggage of the AR, the baggage of knowing that Buffy slept with an evil, soulless, demon.......so what does she think of him now? He has to fear that she only loved him for his "coat" and now all that is left is the poet. And Buffy, will she reject the poet and long for a bit of the monster that got her going in season six? I'm sure we will find out.
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Love this post! More comments later, I hope! -- Rahael, 02:54:20 10/30/02 Wed
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Wow. Great Post. . . . (spoilers for season 7) -- Pilgrim, 05:32:48 10/30/02 Wed
And you bring up a lot of stuff I've been thinking about recently, but in another context. I didn't really see how that stuff was related to Buffy stuff, but your post illuminated.
What is the heart of a person? Is there a heart, an essential self that we can discover or create? Or are there only roles that we perform for ourselves and each other?
I find this question especially urgent with regard to Spike, since he is such a role-player--he's almost always performing. From School Hard, when Sheila asks him who he is, and Spike responds, "Who do you want me to be?" To last season, when he tried to perform the role of boyfriend, but didn't know how Buffy wanted that role performed, so he kept trying different ways of being with her.
If there is only performance of self, and no true heart of self, what can be our standards for making moral judgments? In times past, perhaps we could defer to authorities outside the self--the law or religion could be seen as absolute arbiters of moral behavior. For a long time, though, these authorities haven't held the power in society they once did. In the Buffyverse, it seems given that these outside authorities aren't very helpful. Now Buffy says she _is_ the law; Spike seems to be finding that being a good boy and obeying authorities isn't getting him very far in dealing with that shiny new soul; Anya is now alone without the institution of marriage or D'Hoffryn to provide authority for her decision-making.
I think you are onto something important when you talk about relationships between people being so important. In a different context, the philosopher Robert Pippin suggests that a person's sense of self arises out of social interaction, not out of possession of an essential soul that somehow comes with being human. And it's also in the context of social interaction that moral issues arise, not from adherence (or not) to a moral code imposed from "out there." No one person possesses any fixed, normative standard for making moral judgments because such standards do not exist (Pippin contends). Instead (and here Pippin is talking about characters in a novel), as the characters realize they do not possess any individually owned meaning, as they realize their independence on other characters, the question of their moral oblgations to others takes shape for consideration. And it's up to the readers of the novel (or the viewers of the show) to make what they can of the moral issues raised. I suppose we do some of that here, by talking through the show's moral quandries with other viewers.
I'm not sure I agree with Pippin (or Buffy) that there are no "spiritual guidebooks" that provide authority for making decisions, and that there is no essential self but only performances we make for ourselves and others. But I do think this is a possibility that the show itself is raising, and a philosophy that the show leans toward.
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Very interresting -- Etrangere, 10:25:53 10/30/02 Wed
Indeed, doing social studies, I think there's more to self that comes from education and society than what you're naturally born with :)
It's interesting because in BtVSn the soul has never been equated with the self, the identity. Only with morals. The only thing that was related to identity, metaphysically, was the Katra in Who Are You. (one could wonder if Buffy's soul stayed in her body and that's what pushed Faith to realise what "wrong" meant") and also, it's interesting because in BtVS there is this big metaphore about the Theatre of life, that the show itself represents, where people roleplay. That's the theatre Willow has to go in restless of course. (I want to speak about all those things in my restless essay if I ever finish writing it :)
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Wonderful post! -- ponygirl, 07:26:13 10/30/02 Wed
Great work Ete! (And Caroline too!)
There were so many references to seeing in Selfless. If we cannot trust what we see anymore, can we instead trust what we feel?
Anya let herself be defined by others, and by her function, until at the end of a 1000+ existence she wondered if there was nothing to her. Buffy too was called, given a name and function, but she chafed against it, always asserting the Buffy part of herself over the Slayer. Now many years later she has accepted her role. She is the Slayer, she is the Law. Yet she protects her heart behind her Slayer persona.
"That's still where we are. The shattered personnas of Spike; Willow's dealing with her Black Willow personality, Buffy in white and Buffy in black. The same person, the same identity, only seen through different eyeballs.
Or maybe it's only an "Impersonation", badly played and thus only deserving to be thrown vegetables to as you would to a bad actor !"
To this list of where we stand so early in the season, I would also add that we have a possible Big Bad who can seemingly take on other forms. Appear as what people want to see, fear to see, expect to see. Perhaps it will come to illustrate how fragile some of these well-constructed and tightly held personas are.
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Re: Wonderful post! -- Etrangere, 10:31:45 10/30/02 Wed
"To this list of where we stand so early in the season, I would also add that we have a possible Big Bad who can seemingly take on other forms. Appear as what people want to see, fear to see, expect to see. Perhaps it will come to illustrate how fragile some of these well-constructed and tightly held personas are."
Oh yes ! very good point ! The Big Bad is always to symbolicaly important !
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Interesting posts here...adding to accolades -- shadowkat, 11:48:43 10/30/02 Wed
First off, I did something today that I normally don't have the time and patience to do, but since I'm in T-minus 1 and counting at work and have zip to do..actually had time.
I read all the posts - in order and out of order.
Melded together in my brain now...beginning to have a few gut-level hunches about what's going on this season.
first a clarification: my theory on heart, mind, spirit, hand wasn't so much that each season is just about each of these segments, but that each season sort of focuses
on one - and its effects on all the others.
Example: Spirit. A disjointed spirit or sick spirit could cause the hands (the action, the healing) to become disconnected or to be denied or even lost. When your spirit is gone, you don't want to act, it becomes meaningless to the heart - and the hands become disconnected - hence all the chopped off hand images. So it's not just about the spirit or only about it - it's about the spirit in relation to all the other parts.
Same with Heart this year.It's not just about the heart or only about the heart - it's the heart in relation to...
I think that makes more sense. The problem with writing posts from an intitiutive or subconscious level is it's hard to articulate what the heck it is I'm sensing enough to communicate it to other people. Or at least that's my problem ;-)
Some lovely stuff in Etrangere's post - I particularly love the part:
"Sometimes we often defines ourselves in terms of roles, of fonctions. What do you do, what do you work in, is one of the first question you ask people you meet. Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer or is she Buffy the counsellor ? Today, just like Anya's "I am vengeance", she was reducing herself to what she had to do "I am the law".
Sometimes, the definitions are about the one we relate to. The one we love. I'm her mother, her sister. I'm his wife. Anya used to define herself, her identity, around the one she loved, Olaf and Xander, and both times, when she was betrayed, her whole identity scrumble to let only a demonic ID surviving. Spike did that too, define himself around the one he loved. (Well, Spike's built up identity might have been more complexe than that but each times the one he loved had a great importance to it) but when he betrayed his loves (Drusilla and Buffy, not sure this could apply to Cecily), he had to reinvente himself a whole new identity. Actually it's funny the ressemblance between this episode and Fool For Love, the point about all things done and said through your life, we are back to the beginning and nothing changed. You still don't really know who you are."
How true. And an excellent summary by the way of several other posts I've read. I think William did try to reinvent himself with Cecily - by fleeing and being turned into a vampire - the manly man, the creature of violence (actually he ironically may have boosted himself - if Cecily was a vengeance demon or lowered himself further if she wasn't - lazy writers making us fill in the blanks.) And thank you for the connection between Anya's curse on the partygoers humilating the poor girl and Spike's curse on the party-goers humilating him. (I don't know if Spike actually drove railroad Spike's through those party-goers heads or if that part of his legend is made up, but I'm willing to assume it's the case.)
Anya to Willow: "Do you even know what they did to her? They humilated her like it was some game. They deserved what happened to them! They deserved to be punished!"
Yet who is Anya trying to convince here? Herself or Willow?
I found the overlay of dialogue interesting in this episode as well: Spike is saying to compassionate Buffy, "I don't trust what I see" while we are looking at Anya's guilt and pained reflection in the mirror, blood dotting her forehead.
Spike and Anya are beginning to question who the heck they are. They are beginning to question their masks. Their identities. And whether inflicting pain is such a good thing. If it really helps.
(I really noticed this questioning of self in Beneath You where Spike and Anya fight, when Anya threatens to rip off Spike's cocky mask and reveal his soul to Xander and Buffy. Both go into full demon mode and fight. Then Buffy joins them in slayer mode. Leaving Xander on the sidelines in a state of confusion - actually I think Xander is the only one not wearing a mask in that scene.)
2. The other point I like is:"Change and how it related with the self, a complex subject. Every time we change, we die a little. Surely we could consider that Spike died when he aquired a soul, because he became another. Yet he is still the same.
In the end we are all who we are.
"That's not me anymore", says Willow, yet we just witnessed that the identity that was Black Willow is still burried, not so very deeply, into her self. Are we onions ? Are we just layers and layers of faces and faces until we reach the heart of the identity ?"
I think it's true, as we change, a part of us, like a snake shedding a skin or an onion shedding a layer, is left behind. But if you notice the skin underneath that layer? Is the same. It hasn't really changed. It may be softer. Newer. A different color. But our identity at the core is still intact. We just discard that part of ourselves, the persona if you will, which no longer fits or seems right. In a way, perhaps, it is a kind of death - a death of a role that we had gotten used to playing. Example: Alec in A Clockwork Orange (the novel not the movie) sheds his badboy image eventually, and as he does so, loses interest in everything that went with it - the pals, the music, the costume...he's still Alec of course, but the slang and the persona he once was is gone...a memory. I liked Deb's physical analogy, or what felt, literal to me. Of how literally dying for a few minutes caused a portion of her to be ripped or shredded away, leaving her a different person when she awoke. She seemed different to everyone around her. (Glad you've joined us Deb - am loving your posts!!) Makes me think of Buffy - coming out of the grave and being reborn. When she climbs out...part of her is shredding away or maybe that part was torn away when she was ripped from the afterlife. Her song "Going through the Motions" in some ways reminds me of what Deb wrote. It also reminds me of a sort of metaphorical death I myself experienced last year - the death of a career path and a lifestyle - not literal death of course...but it did change me irrevocably and drastically, changed me like young Alec
is changed in a way or Buffy. My interests changed. My tastes. My desires. The world flipped upside down suddenly and as a result the way I see the world is not the same way I saw it before. Is that a type of death? I think so. If only in the purely figurative sense.
I wonder if we can apply this idead metaphorically to things like leaving our parents home and setting off on our own? Quitting a job we've had for six years? Changing careers? Getting married?
Getting divorced? Being raped? Or raping or murdering someone? Having children? Losing a child? Losing a parent? Do each of these events result in type of death of the pysche? Or is that too drastic a view?
Do we choose to let go of portions of ourselves and add on new ones? Like a snake taking a new skin or a caterpiller building a cocoon to become a butterfly?
Spike appears to have done this. After he hurt Buffy, He went to the lurker entity, and fought for his old identity - the part of him that he'd once been. The part he knew wouldn't hurt someone, who may hold him back. "Make me who I was...so I can give her what she deserves." Our first impression of this line was vengeance. But "who I was" was the part we misunderstood.
Spike the vampire wanted to become who he was. He wanted to shred the vampire persona and be William again. Except you can't really go back to what you were, can you? Somehow that person has changed, has tried on new roles.
Compare this with Anyanka. Who after Xander breaks her heart, decides to go back to what she was.
Interesting how these two characters define identity.
Spike defined it as "soul" or core personality, conscience?
Anya defined it as former occupation - vengeance demon.
In Selfless - Anya realizes that the occupation doesn't define who she is. That going back to it did not solve her problems or heal her heart. She just felt empty. Perhaps the sword through the chest was the moment she truly sensed it.
"Certainly, sticking a sword through Angel's heart was a big part of Buffy's becoming, Anya seemed to awaken to a new life after Buffy put that blade through her chest, and certainly Spike became someone new with a soul put through his chest !)"
Maybe the sword through the chest caused Anya to relive the memory of loving Xander and realizing that constructing an identity solely based on that love was not the answer - even though the love itself, was? Anya wants accomplishment.
1. The accomplishement of being a successful store owner - becomes empty.
2. the accomplishment of being a good wife to Olaf - becomes empty
3. the accomplishment of being a successful vengeance demon - well you're apparently only as good as your last vengeance. And that's still empty.
4. the accomplishment of getting married...of being a MRS?
Perhaps Anya's biggest accomplishment is finding out who Anya is? And maybe she has begun to discover that by falling in love?
Maybe the same can be said for Spike? Who found his soul out of his love for Buffy? How ironic for the big bad - that his greatest accomplishment to date was not trying to destroy the world or the killing of two slayers but the decision and success of getting his soul back, going back to who he was?
This brings me to the point I really want to discuss:
The Big Bad...I'm becoming more and more convinced that
the Big Bad is metaphorically what the characters most fear about themselves. It will bring out these fears and torture the characters with them, force the characters to see parts of themselves they've tucked behind walls and hidden in closets. And in fighting the BB, the characters will have to first face these fears and dispell them. They may have to see with their hearts not their eyes. Trust what their heart sees. As Xander...saw Anya in Selfless.
Anyways great post...sorry for the ramble.
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Small correction -- alcibiades, 12:36:20 10/30/02 Wed
(I really noticed this questioning of self in Beneath You where Spike and Anya fight, when Anya threatens to rip off Spike's cocky mask and reveal his soul to Xander and Buffy. Both go into full demon mode and fight. Then Buffy joins them in slayer mode. Leaving Xander on the sidelines in a state of confusion - actually I think Xander is the only one not wearing a mask in that scene.)
Spike puts on the demon mask to fight Buffy, not Anya. Buffy grabs him from behind, twirls him around and when he is facing her he has it on --he did not have it on before.
He knows he can't stop Anya from seeing that he is not a complete demon anymore -- their fight is to shut her up. But he puts on the mask so that BUFFY won't sense he got the soul. And putting on the demon mask pretty much gets her off the trail and on the trail of punching him out.
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You're right thanks for correcting that. -- shadowkat, 13:12:49 10/30/02 Wed
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