BTVS/ATS Redux - the mother/son angle

[shadowkat]

Every once and a while someone out there posts a little gem that explains exactly why something I watched, read, or heard captivated me.

Here's the latest - and it's about a series that one would think after all this time would have lost its allure for me, it hasn't and partly for the reasons discussed in selenak's essay on The Fanged Four.

In an essay regarding the Fanged Four or Angel/Spike/Drusilla/Darla of the Buffy and Angel series, selenak discusses how Whedon and his writers ultimately flipped previous television and book models regarding the vampire/gothic genre on their heads. Normally it's the guy who sired everyone. Hence the word "sire" as in patriach or father-figure. Look up the word in the dictionary - according to the American Heritage Dictionary - the first definition is "a father", the next: "form of address for a male superior esp. a king." Whedon in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series uses the word for men and women. Spike to Angel in School Hard: "You were my sire, my yoda" - possibly meaning "father" "king" and "teacher" all wrapped into one. Yet late in the episode "Fool For Love" it was Dru, a female, who "sired" him. Just as in "Angel" it is revealed that it was Darla that sired Angel.

Previously in the gothic tradition - Dracula through Ann Rice and even Forever Knight, the guy does all of the siring, only in a few instances is it a woman. And as selenak points out in his/her essay the most interesting bit is how we regard the incestuous relationships - while our society seems to half accept, even embrace the older male/younger female dynamic, we struggle with the older female/younger male. Marilyn Monroe's song - "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" is considered a sexual turn-on and hot. But how about a guy singing "My Heart Belongs to Mommy?" You never hear it. It squicks us.

Yet, and this is one of the things I adored about the later years of BTVS and ATS and why both series fascinate me - Whedon did something few writers attempt, he paralleled the Daddy/Little Girl and the Mommy/Little Boy relationships. Buffy is shown aching for her missing father in the first three seasons of Buffy, Dru talks all about Daddy - referencing Angel who in some regards takes Buffy's father's place in her heart - he takes her ice skating on her birthday, he visits her at night and tucks her in bed, he acts as a protector, he remains mysterious about his background, etc. On Buffy's seventeenth birthday - when she comes of age, she sleeps with Angel - who up until now has been doing the things her father did. That's when she loses him - the moment they sleep together - which in reality would be what would happen if a girl slept with her father or father-figure. See Lolita, which is heavily referenced in the latter half of the season specifically in the flashback sequences of Becoming - when Angel looks upon Buffy for the first time, in pigtails sucking on a lollipop much as James Mason's Professor looks upon Lolita in the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of the famous novel - where the girl is slightly older than she is in the book, around 16 as opposed to 14.

This bit would not be interesting to me, because I've seen it done before in gothic novels most recently Ann Rice, if it weren't for the fact that the writers decide to do the same thing with the boys in the later half of Angel and Buffy. In S4 Angel Apocalypse Nowish and S7 Buffy Lies My Parents Told Me - Connor, Spike, and Wood clearly have a thing for Mommy. And in effect ache to do the same thing Buffy did with Angel, with dire consequences. Connor sleeps with Cordelia - who is to Connor in some respects what Angel was to Buffy, she's about five years older than him in the scene - 22 to Connor's 17. Angel has the aspect of a 26 year old (even if he is 240 in actuality), she has acted as a mother figure, yet is not his mother physically. She has protected him. And he, like Buffy did with Angel, in some ways sees her as a subsitute but knows deep down she can't be, so like Buffy, the sex does not feel wrong to him even though like Buffy the sex results in dire consequences. The fans at the time this was shown were squicked, none more so than, and this is highly ironic, the B/A shippers. The fact that the writers went there and more to the point underlined the similarities, even to the extent that they mentioned them offhand in interviews and commentary fascinated and intrigued me. Hah! I thought, at last, a television show that does not cater to its fan base, who respects its fan base enough to pull back the curtain and examine something we may not want to see regarding our own attitudes towards gender politics.

Meanwhile over on Buffy, we are told that Spike has repressed feelings for his own mother, which Drusilla, then finally Buffy act as substitutes. He transfers what he felt for her to Buffy, much as Buffy transfers her feelings for her own father to Angel, Riley and finally Spike. Giles and Joyce - the real parental figures on the show remain at a distance, disappearing when the sex crops up. And when the relationship gets too intense or serious, pop up to attempt to break it apart, the voice of reason as it were - first Joyce in Season 3, telling Angel to leave before he destroys Buffy - she is more upfront and less violent in her approach. Trusting Angel to see reason. Giles on the other hand, is under-handed and secretive, he enlists the aid of Wood in an attempt to remove Spike permanently from the scene. But unlike Joyce, Giles fails and Spike stays with Buffy through the end.

With Connor/Cordy and Spike/Buffy we see two different results - both end in death, one the mother/daughter's and one the son/father's. Connor is both father and son in the Cordy/Connor storyline - giving birth to Jasmine who is both his daughter yet also his Queen or sire.
Spike is both father and son in the Buffy/Spike storyline - the older man who guides her, knight to Buffy's Queen, yet also her child, her creation in how he obtains the soul and sacrifices himself finding redeemption ultimately in her eyes. Both Cordy and Buffy look at their men and encourage them to do what they wish with the simple words - I believe in you.
Both to a degree worship at their alter. And both are sacrificed, only to live in a different way. Connor to live the life of a human, Spike as a ghost.

The writers explore within these relationships all the variables of the male love for mommy and the mother love for son. So much has been written about father/son regarding Angel, but what fascinated me most about the series was the mother/son dynamic and how that dynamic contrasted and paralleled what was being shown in the parent show it was spun off from.
By the same token while Angel can be seen as Buffy's father figure, Buffy can be seen as Angel's mother figure - the mother to his knighthood. Up until he meets Buffy, Angel is shown as a miscreant, a failure, a gutter dweller - it is not until he sees her that he begins his journey towards champion. Darla may have given birth to Angelus, but Buffy gave birth to Angel. Even his soul is given to him by a woman - a gypsey. It's why he can't be with either, for the same reason a mother cannot live forever with her son, or a daughter with her father, yet by the same token clearly aches to be. The Freudian knot untangled and revisited in a new and intriguing way.

Comments

Re: Sibling Issues

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Particulary if you are doing a collaborative project with other people taking turns running the show, writing episodes, directing, and throwing in their two cents. LOL! From what I've read, I honestly think the writers had similar arguments. They still haven't come to a conclusion on which would win cavemen or astronauts. Another reason why television is an interesting medium and at times a frustrating one. ;-)

PS: You were right about Friday Night Lights. I've become a convert.