(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Found a few things of interest on lj today:

1. http://community.ew.com/2015/07/24/love-bites-angel-or-spike/

Basically one EW blogger writes for Team Angel, and one for Team Spike. So far they have one comment.
The Team Angel comment lost me when she told me that both Angel and Buffy were heroes...eh, not really. Angel is what I'd call an anti-hero or classic noir hero - whose actions inevitably doom everyone around him, and he can never quite rise above his flaws. Reminds me a lot of the character of Luke in General Hospital, actually, abusive father, saintly mother, adoring sister, killed both his parents, and tries to be a hero, has an earth-shaking soul-mate relationship with a petite blond girl, who is a hero, but he can't ever really be with -- without destroying her. Later, he has a far more adult relationship with a rich bitchy heiress, who saves him a few times from himself, but is always feeling put aside by his one great first love with the pretty blond heroine (Laura). Finally, coming to grips with his issues, he decides to leave town, leave both loves, and go find his own redemption. It's not a new trope. Actually I didn't realize how similar the character's arcs were until I just wrote that.

Hero? Eh...depends on how narrow or broad your definition is and what your criteria for hero is.
Mileage varies on it. I've argued it to death on lj. Dlgood and I used to fight over it. We have yet to persuade one another. Actually, we just end up pissing each other off. Which to be honest happens most of the time that anyone engages in this particular debate. Because let's face it - one person's idea of a hero may well be another person's idea of a villain. Look at the political landscape, for every person who saw Obama or Bush or Reagan or Clinton or Carter or Nixon or Roosevelt or Churchill as heroic, there was someone else who REALLY didn't. Same is true with religion and mythology. Hercules - if read one way, is heroic, read another way is anything but.

Actually that was what I liked about how they wrote Angel and Spike on Buffy, you could argue it both ways. This was true of all the characters on that series, at any given moment they could either do something unexpectedly heroic or villainous.

People want it to clear cut or black and white. Black hats vs. White Hats. Heroes vs. Villains. But seriously? That's boring and predictable. Far more interesting when its not.

2. Tumblr discussions.

*People on Tumblr miss livejournal, while there are folks defending tumblir

* and Frelling Talk's discussion of it in LJ

Personally, I think the popularity is a side effect of people doing everything communication oriented on their smartphone.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Kate Lockley: And now you do?
Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because, I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.
Kate Lockley: Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany.


Pretty words. But Angel's actions do not follow them. He still does horrible things in order to save people. He hasn't figured out that how he saves them is in some respects far more important. Also does he actually save Connor? Connor has no choice in the matter. No way to seek his own redemption. Angel cheats.

Contrast Angel and Kate Lockely with Anne, who has a halfway house and is kind.
And saves one life at a time, the hard way.

I don't know that Angel acts to prove he's worth something. I think that Angel acts to prove he's worth nothing. He acts to prove that actions are worth something; that even a monster is capable of good acts.

Except are these acts actually good? Do they end in a good result? He may have good intentions, but his methodology needs work. He's the typical noir hero, tries to make the world better, tries to do the act of kindness, but every act is tainted with blood.
He can't do it without destroying someone's life, and falling back into the abyss.
It's the vigilante hero, or say Batman in the Chris Nolan films, who saves people by killing, by violence.

As Buffy tells Giles at the end of First Night - you can't fight evil with evil, sooner or later it will be hard to tell which is which. Angel fights the good fight, perhaps, but there's a reason he can't win - he fights violence with violence. He hurts people to save people.

[elisi]

Angel fights the good fight, perhaps, but there's a reason he can't win - he fights violence with violence. He hurts people to save people.
'When great German guns were yawning open-mouthed at you, it was no use saying, “Take the nasty, horrid things away, I don’t like them.” They wouldn’t go unless you took other big guns and fired at them.'
From 'The Rough Road' by John Locke.

There's a definite truth to this. Anne helps one person at a time, picking them up at trying to put themselves together. But Angel wants to fight the system. Wants to stop the whole machine (which is what W&H represents). Of course it's not possible, but his instincts aren't wrong. He wasn't made to be a nursemaid, he was made to be a fighter. A champion, a protector. Except he is flawed. Unlike Buffy he has that darkness, that past that will never let him be.

Which is where the whole drama of the show comes from.

If Angel was Anne, there wouldn't be a show. Or, it'd be very different. But the conflict between the hero he wants to be, and the monster he was, is what makes him a fascinating character. Yes he gets things wrong CONSTANTLY. But he keeps trying.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I agree with all that. But ...I still don't see any of that as being necessarily heroic, at least not in the modern sense of the word. It is however the definition of the film noir hero.

"The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.” - Frank Miller.

or, better yet - see the essay below:

http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/essays/detective_hero.asp

These hard-boiled heroes are anti-social loners that are subject to existential angst. The environments they live and work in are dark and scary metropolises, often red-light districts, or otherwise dehumanizing environments, like large desolate office buildings. They are experiencing anonymity through their large scale surroundings. The tough guy is often marked by an excellent gift of verbal wit, even if they are not always given the strongest intellect; this is a heritage from the hard-boiled novels. Their worlds are dominated by crime, corruption and cruelty. The protagonist often gets tangled up in some of these activities himself, in addition to his interest in the erotic. Thus, he lives in a distorting world.

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/general/does-film-noir-mirror-the-culture/the-male-protagonist.php

In the Angel's world, there are no heroes, there are no villains, just monsters with varying agendas. But within that world there are flashes of heroism.

Anyhow, I think this goes back to the general thrust of my initial post about differing types of heroes? And how mileage, it varies on this point?

I mean we generally agree, what we disagree on is what type of hero Angel is. I don't see him as a romantic hero, I see him as a hero caked in blood.

[elisi]

I wouldn't call him a romantic hero, and he certainly fits into the noir mould very well. I just think there's... more to him.

I get like this with my favourite characters - there are so many facets that I automatically rebel if someone tries to pigeon hole them. Spike is probably the ultimate example of this, but Angel is up there too. :)

ETA: What I mean is that how I view is a little like a patchwork quilt. With opinions like this playing into it. He's a son, he's a lover, he's a hero, he's a monster, he's a victim, he's a father (not just to Connor, but to those he's sired as well)... Actually, maybe this fic captures him best: Shashu Blue.

He wears the coat, the look, the cadence of noir... But it's only the first layer.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh, not really pigeon-holing. Just don't see him the way that the EW shipper did, which is swoon-worthy big hero or as a romantic hero. And I like the character too..

Don't believe me? Check out this essay:

http://www.oocities.org/shadowkatbtvs/as_restraint.html

Also I was discussing him within the narrow context of the EW post, not generally.

[elisi]

Oh, I'm not arguing, really. Pollyanna here... /o\

And nope, not a big swoon-worthy romantic hero. Unless it's Spike swooning. ;)