![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
BTVS: Critiquing the Gothic Romance Trope....
A while back, can't remember when exactly, I watched an old interview with Audrey Hepburn during the interview she said a lot of things, but the statement that stuck with me was this:
"When you are young you want wild passionate love, where you can't stop thinking about the other person, you become lost in them, and you fight and have wild love at night...but it gets tiring. You can't sustain it. After a while...you find you are just tired. Later, when I got much older...I realized that I didn't want that. I wanted someone I could just sip tea with, talk to, sleep with, go on walks, who was a companion, and we didn't necessarily have sex all the time, but we loved and it was deeper and lasted longer." I wish I could remember her exact words.
Been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S1-S3 at the moment, and have just completed the first five episodes of Season 3. What I've become struck by this go around, which I didn't really notice before, no idea why - is the deft critique of romantic love and in particular the gothic romance trope, with all of its horrific consequences. Joss Whedon and his writing team are deft satirists of the horror and in particular gothic horror/gothic romance tradition. Not surprising, considering the name of the series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer - that alone, just screams satire.
There's a great line in the fourth episode of S3, the episode in which Angel returns from hell, entitled Beauty and the Beasts:
"It's okay to get lost in love. There's nothing wrong with that. But sooner or later you have to get un lost, see what is going on around you and take part in it. Because if you stay lost...then love becomes your master, and you - its dog."
The speaker is Doctor Plat. A psychiatrist that Buffy is forced to see after she is reinstated in school. The line occurs after Buffy has confided in him her feelings regarding Angel. She's told him that she had loved this guy, he had been her first, and then...he turned mean, but she still loved him anyway.
Doctor Plat is killed, rather brutally, by the boyfriend of another patient, a couple who serve as metaphorical stand-in's for the Buffy/Angel romance of the last season and this one. They even look a bit like Buffy and Angel, Debbie is blond, and her boyfriend is dark headed and when he turns into Mr. Hyde - has the ridged forehead, slanted demon eyes, and speaks a bit like Angelus. It's subletly done. As we had with Angel - Angel/Angelus - who appear as separate as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so does this guy - he's the cute angelic hunk/ and abusive monster. When he changes, the monster remembers but he does not. Angel similarily claims to have no knowledge of Angelus or Angelus's deeds when he returns to Buffy at the end of Becoming Part II - just as Debbie's boyfriend acts as if he has knowledge of Mr. Hyde. But when she attempts to get rid of the formula that turned him into the monster - he tells her, he no longer needs it - she is enough, all by herself, to do it to him. Just as Angelus states that all Angel requires is Buffy to turn him into mean old Angelus.
In case we don't get the point, there are camera shots that emphasize it - when Debbie's boyfriend changes back into his Dr. Jekyll persona and sees that he hurt her, he falls to his knees in front of her and hugs her waist crying. And she pats him, saying that's not you. This isn't you. At the end of the episode, Angel is in the same pose, his head buried in Buffy's stomach, as Buffy looks past him...the camera pulls back to show us what she sees - in the foreground, while she and Angel fade into the background - it's Debbie lying on her back, dead on the ground, killed by her boyfriend who had turned once again into Mr. Hyde. The image serves as a warning and potentially foreshadowing.
Then there's the first episode of S3, Anne, written and directed by Joss Whedon. It's an episode that I was admittedly less than fond of when it first aired. Now, I see the satire that I didn't see then. It feels obvious to me now. So much so, that I wonder how I could have missed it. In this episode, Buffy is attempting to get lost, to lose herself in her memories of Angel, in her love of Angel, and her grief and overwhelming guilt at his loss.
Buffy had killed Angel and sent him to hell at the end of Season 2, at her friends urging, and in order to save the world. But, for Buffy, nothing but Angel matters, and part of her wishes she'd gone with him. She runs across a young couple, Lily and Ricky, who have tattoos - on Lily's arm is half a heart with Ricky, and the other half of the heart is on Ricky's arm with Lily. They are both fairly pale, undernourished, and wrapped around each other - as if they are all that matters. They see nothing else. Then Ricky disappears, and Lily is lost. Wandering about like a ghost. Buffy tells her that she needs to deal, not close her eyes to everything but Ricky or what she's lost. But Lily doesn't listen and gives into the despaire, what is life without Ricky? So she literally follows Ricky to hell. Except he's long gone, having gone there before her, and left an old man. 80 years of age. Buffy save Lily, and Lily taking inspiration from Buffy - takes her pseudonyme Ann, and her job at Denny's waitressing.
Ricky and Lily are much like Debbie and Dr. Jekyll (Pete?) - stand-in's for Buffy and Angel. Victims of love.
In Season 2, the episode I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - shows this as well, except in this episode Angelus and Buffy get stand-in for the doomed lovers. The lovers in this episode, are an older teacher and her love-sick student, who as the title states only has eyes for her. She is his life. He can think of nothing else. When she rejects him, because she's much older and their love can't work - he kills her, then himself - because life without her is something he can't handle. Buffy is the person he picks to possess in order to find his own peace - because as she states, he knows she can identify. And Angelus is picked for similar reasons - he is obsessed with Buffy, much as he had been when he had a soul. [ETA for clarity: Like the teacher, he finds himself obsessed with Buffy, he can't break it off, he can't leave her. Even though he knows it is wrong, even though he knows he is hurting her. Even when he has the chance - to leave town on her birthday, he gives her a gift keeping her with him. The implication here - in case you missed it - is the teacher who has the experience, the knowledge, who knows what will happen, keeps the relationship going until it almost too late to break it off. And when the worst does happen, she continues it by possessing people, enabling her lover to kill them each night again and again. The misdirect is that the student is the villian her, that is what Buffy thinks, because Buffy blames herself for Angel going bad. As may well the viewer. But if you pay close attention to the metaphors before and after that episode, from Inca Mummy Girl to Ted, you'll see that it is not necessarily Buffy's fault, any more than it is Xander's for loving the mummy girl or Joyce's for loving Ted. It's her fault for letting herself get lost in him. Letting the love take over, so she's sees nothing else. But Angel is the one that pursued Buffy, and Angel is the one who went after her. Just as the mummy girl, Ted, Malcolm the Robot, and the Praying Mantis (monsters from the first season) go after their targets.]
Angel much like the teacher in I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, loves her, but it is love that is not rational, and leads him about by the nose. As Spike states in an earlier episode, Innocence, "it sickened me, watching you play the slayer's lap-dog" - which in effect is what Angel had become. As Angelus, he wants to hurt her. To make her feel as he did. Yet, he still, as Willow states in Passion, Buffy is all he thinks about. And as a result the world falls down. In I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - the two doomed lovers kill innocent people as they replay their self-involved love story over and over again, killing all and hurting all that get in the way of it. They are not kind ghosts. Angel and Buffy similarily inflict harm on all around them - Angelus going so far as to attempt to open the mouth of hell and suck all into it, while Buffy comes wickedly close to losing everything, including her own life - as it stands, all she loses is Jenny Calendar and Kendra.
Season 2, also had a stand-in couple or metaphor for the Buffy/Angel romance - in the form of Spike and Drusilla - who were fools for love, obsessed lovers, who cared not for anyone but each other. Spike was much like Ricky, Pete, Angel/Angelus, and the doomed boy mentioned above in his devotion for Drusilla. Drusilla was also, much like Lily, Debbie, the doomed teacher, and Buffy in her devotion to Spike. It is clear from School Hard through Becoming that Spike would do anything for Dru. He would die for her. He would kill for her. He would sacrifice everything. He would even betray Angelus, and strike a deal with the enemy - the slayer - to get her back. Buffy likewise appears to be willing to do anything to get Angel back - including stall when she thinks Willow can re-insoul him. They are both love's bitch, being lead about by a leash - at Angel and Dru's whim. While Angel and Drusilla cavort behind them, seeming not to care. Angel and Drusilla go from weak, damsels in What's Your Line two-parter, to devilish controllers in Innocence and Becoming. And Spike and Buffy go from sacrificing everything to save them in What's Your Line - to fighting them in duels that are, but not quite to the death.
It's the gothic romance turned inside out.
Beside these wild passionate love affairs - are the romances of Buffy's friends. Each a separate take on her own. Xander and Cordelia - which typify the mortal foes or star-crossed lovers, who realize they really have a lot in common and fall headlong into lust and possibly love. Willow and OZ - the companionable gentle lovers, who just snuggle and never argue and rarely appear to kiss - yet OZ turns into a beast and has that violent potential but like Angel, it's not OZ - he isn't aware when it happens. Then finally Giles and Jenny, the more mature, adult romance, complete with awkward courtship, and minor betrayals and forgiveness - it is the one that does end the most abruptly, a direct casualty of the Buffy/Angel romance.
The message seems to be clear, it is not romantic love in of itself that is the problem, so much as being completely lost in it, where the only thing you care about is your lover, they are all that matters and all that you see. There are other things, more interesting things than romantic love...which you can forget, when you are caught inside it.
It's an interesting critique - particularly when you consider all the tv shows and books that play into this fantasy or trope. The most famous amongst them is the best-selling Twilight series. Whedon's Buffy in a way satirizes the romances in Twilight, True Blood, Moonlight, Forever Knight, and many many more. It is what distinguishes Buffy and why the show and writing stand out. In Buffy, the lover's do not ride off into the sunset, instead she tells him at the end of the series - what was the highlight of our relationship? When you tried to kill me? Or when I sent you to hell? But then Buffy, unlike the others is not a romance, it is a coming of age horror tale, focusing on the journey of a flawed heroine through a world filled with demons both literal and metaphorical. Told with satiric wit and often undercutting the romantic tropes within the genre. The irony, of course, is that a good portion of the fandom has resisted the satire and continues, much - I suspect - to the writers considerable chagrin not to mention annoyance - to insist on the durability and sustainability of whatever romantic trope the writer is lampooning. Stubbornly blind to the satire contained within the tale.
We see, I think, what we want to see. We hear the story the way we want to hear it, regardless of how well it may be told. It's the most frustrating thing about human communication - no matter what language and no matter how well translated, you cannot force someone to hear or see what you want them to, especially when they wish to see something else entirely. Any more than you can force them to agree or see your point of view. You can write volumes arguing it, they will still stubbornly only read the bits of what you wrote that they wished to read. As I fear you may well be doing now with what I wrote above.
"When you are young you want wild passionate love, where you can't stop thinking about the other person, you become lost in them, and you fight and have wild love at night...but it gets tiring. You can't sustain it. After a while...you find you are just tired. Later, when I got much older...I realized that I didn't want that. I wanted someone I could just sip tea with, talk to, sleep with, go on walks, who was a companion, and we didn't necessarily have sex all the time, but we loved and it was deeper and lasted longer." I wish I could remember her exact words.
Been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S1-S3 at the moment, and have just completed the first five episodes of Season 3. What I've become struck by this go around, which I didn't really notice before, no idea why - is the deft critique of romantic love and in particular the gothic romance trope, with all of its horrific consequences. Joss Whedon and his writing team are deft satirists of the horror and in particular gothic horror/gothic romance tradition. Not surprising, considering the name of the series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer - that alone, just screams satire.
There's a great line in the fourth episode of S3, the episode in which Angel returns from hell, entitled Beauty and the Beasts:
"It's okay to get lost in love. There's nothing wrong with that. But sooner or later you have to get un lost, see what is going on around you and take part in it. Because if you stay lost...then love becomes your master, and you - its dog."
The speaker is Doctor Plat. A psychiatrist that Buffy is forced to see after she is reinstated in school. The line occurs after Buffy has confided in him her feelings regarding Angel. She's told him that she had loved this guy, he had been her first, and then...he turned mean, but she still loved him anyway.
Doctor Plat is killed, rather brutally, by the boyfriend of another patient, a couple who serve as metaphorical stand-in's for the Buffy/Angel romance of the last season and this one. They even look a bit like Buffy and Angel, Debbie is blond, and her boyfriend is dark headed and when he turns into Mr. Hyde - has the ridged forehead, slanted demon eyes, and speaks a bit like Angelus. It's subletly done. As we had with Angel - Angel/Angelus - who appear as separate as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so does this guy - he's the cute angelic hunk/ and abusive monster. When he changes, the monster remembers but he does not. Angel similarily claims to have no knowledge of Angelus or Angelus's deeds when he returns to Buffy at the end of Becoming Part II - just as Debbie's boyfriend acts as if he has knowledge of Mr. Hyde. But when she attempts to get rid of the formula that turned him into the monster - he tells her, he no longer needs it - she is enough, all by herself, to do it to him. Just as Angelus states that all Angel requires is Buffy to turn him into mean old Angelus.
In case we don't get the point, there are camera shots that emphasize it - when Debbie's boyfriend changes back into his Dr. Jekyll persona and sees that he hurt her, he falls to his knees in front of her and hugs her waist crying. And she pats him, saying that's not you. This isn't you. At the end of the episode, Angel is in the same pose, his head buried in Buffy's stomach, as Buffy looks past him...the camera pulls back to show us what she sees - in the foreground, while she and Angel fade into the background - it's Debbie lying on her back, dead on the ground, killed by her boyfriend who had turned once again into Mr. Hyde. The image serves as a warning and potentially foreshadowing.
Then there's the first episode of S3, Anne, written and directed by Joss Whedon. It's an episode that I was admittedly less than fond of when it first aired. Now, I see the satire that I didn't see then. It feels obvious to me now. So much so, that I wonder how I could have missed it. In this episode, Buffy is attempting to get lost, to lose herself in her memories of Angel, in her love of Angel, and her grief and overwhelming guilt at his loss.
Buffy had killed Angel and sent him to hell at the end of Season 2, at her friends urging, and in order to save the world. But, for Buffy, nothing but Angel matters, and part of her wishes she'd gone with him. She runs across a young couple, Lily and Ricky, who have tattoos - on Lily's arm is half a heart with Ricky, and the other half of the heart is on Ricky's arm with Lily. They are both fairly pale, undernourished, and wrapped around each other - as if they are all that matters. They see nothing else. Then Ricky disappears, and Lily is lost. Wandering about like a ghost. Buffy tells her that she needs to deal, not close her eyes to everything but Ricky or what she's lost. But Lily doesn't listen and gives into the despaire, what is life without Ricky? So she literally follows Ricky to hell. Except he's long gone, having gone there before her, and left an old man. 80 years of age. Buffy save Lily, and Lily taking inspiration from Buffy - takes her pseudonyme Ann, and her job at Denny's waitressing.
Ricky and Lily are much like Debbie and Dr. Jekyll (Pete?) - stand-in's for Buffy and Angel. Victims of love.
In Season 2, the episode I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - shows this as well, except in this episode Angelus and Buffy get stand-in for the doomed lovers. The lovers in this episode, are an older teacher and her love-sick student, who as the title states only has eyes for her. She is his life. He can think of nothing else. When she rejects him, because she's much older and their love can't work - he kills her, then himself - because life without her is something he can't handle. Buffy is the person he picks to possess in order to find his own peace - because as she states, he knows she can identify. And Angelus is picked for similar reasons - he is obsessed with Buffy, much as he had been when he had a soul. [ETA for clarity: Like the teacher, he finds himself obsessed with Buffy, he can't break it off, he can't leave her. Even though he knows it is wrong, even though he knows he is hurting her. Even when he has the chance - to leave town on her birthday, he gives her a gift keeping her with him. The implication here - in case you missed it - is the teacher who has the experience, the knowledge, who knows what will happen, keeps the relationship going until it almost too late to break it off. And when the worst does happen, she continues it by possessing people, enabling her lover to kill them each night again and again. The misdirect is that the student is the villian her, that is what Buffy thinks, because Buffy blames herself for Angel going bad. As may well the viewer. But if you pay close attention to the metaphors before and after that episode, from Inca Mummy Girl to Ted, you'll see that it is not necessarily Buffy's fault, any more than it is Xander's for loving the mummy girl or Joyce's for loving Ted. It's her fault for letting herself get lost in him. Letting the love take over, so she's sees nothing else. But Angel is the one that pursued Buffy, and Angel is the one who went after her. Just as the mummy girl, Ted, Malcolm the Robot, and the Praying Mantis (monsters from the first season) go after their targets.]
Angel much like the teacher in I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, loves her, but it is love that is not rational, and leads him about by the nose. As Spike states in an earlier episode, Innocence, "it sickened me, watching you play the slayer's lap-dog" - which in effect is what Angel had become. As Angelus, he wants to hurt her. To make her feel as he did. Yet, he still, as Willow states in Passion, Buffy is all he thinks about. And as a result the world falls down. In I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - the two doomed lovers kill innocent people as they replay their self-involved love story over and over again, killing all and hurting all that get in the way of it. They are not kind ghosts. Angel and Buffy similarily inflict harm on all around them - Angelus going so far as to attempt to open the mouth of hell and suck all into it, while Buffy comes wickedly close to losing everything, including her own life - as it stands, all she loses is Jenny Calendar and Kendra.
Season 2, also had a stand-in couple or metaphor for the Buffy/Angel romance - in the form of Spike and Drusilla - who were fools for love, obsessed lovers, who cared not for anyone but each other. Spike was much like Ricky, Pete, Angel/Angelus, and the doomed boy mentioned above in his devotion for Drusilla. Drusilla was also, much like Lily, Debbie, the doomed teacher, and Buffy in her devotion to Spike. It is clear from School Hard through Becoming that Spike would do anything for Dru. He would die for her. He would kill for her. He would sacrifice everything. He would even betray Angelus, and strike a deal with the enemy - the slayer - to get her back. Buffy likewise appears to be willing to do anything to get Angel back - including stall when she thinks Willow can re-insoul him. They are both love's bitch, being lead about by a leash - at Angel and Dru's whim. While Angel and Drusilla cavort behind them, seeming not to care. Angel and Drusilla go from weak, damsels in What's Your Line two-parter, to devilish controllers in Innocence and Becoming. And Spike and Buffy go from sacrificing everything to save them in What's Your Line - to fighting them in duels that are, but not quite to the death.
It's the gothic romance turned inside out.
Beside these wild passionate love affairs - are the romances of Buffy's friends. Each a separate take on her own. Xander and Cordelia - which typify the mortal foes or star-crossed lovers, who realize they really have a lot in common and fall headlong into lust and possibly love. Willow and OZ - the companionable gentle lovers, who just snuggle and never argue and rarely appear to kiss - yet OZ turns into a beast and has that violent potential but like Angel, it's not OZ - he isn't aware when it happens. Then finally Giles and Jenny, the more mature, adult romance, complete with awkward courtship, and minor betrayals and forgiveness - it is the one that does end the most abruptly, a direct casualty of the Buffy/Angel romance.
The message seems to be clear, it is not romantic love in of itself that is the problem, so much as being completely lost in it, where the only thing you care about is your lover, they are all that matters and all that you see. There are other things, more interesting things than romantic love...which you can forget, when you are caught inside it.
It's an interesting critique - particularly when you consider all the tv shows and books that play into this fantasy or trope. The most famous amongst them is the best-selling Twilight series. Whedon's Buffy in a way satirizes the romances in Twilight, True Blood, Moonlight, Forever Knight, and many many more. It is what distinguishes Buffy and why the show and writing stand out. In Buffy, the lover's do not ride off into the sunset, instead she tells him at the end of the series - what was the highlight of our relationship? When you tried to kill me? Or when I sent you to hell? But then Buffy, unlike the others is not a romance, it is a coming of age horror tale, focusing on the journey of a flawed heroine through a world filled with demons both literal and metaphorical. Told with satiric wit and often undercutting the romantic tropes within the genre. The irony, of course, is that a good portion of the fandom has resisted the satire and continues, much - I suspect - to the writers considerable chagrin not to mention annoyance - to insist on the durability and sustainability of whatever romantic trope the writer is lampooning. Stubbornly blind to the satire contained within the tale.
We see, I think, what we want to see. We hear the story the way we want to hear it, regardless of how well it may be told. It's the most frustrating thing about human communication - no matter what language and no matter how well translated, you cannot force someone to hear or see what you want them to, especially when they wish to see something else entirely. Any more than you can force them to agree or see your point of view. You can write volumes arguing it, they will still stubbornly only read the bits of what you wrote that they wished to read. As I fear you may well be doing now with what I wrote above.
no subject
Why would you think I'd like that? I don't read romance novels, watch TV for romance, and I don't have particular awareness of the genre. Which I find largely uninteresting. Perhaps I should then differentiate by using the term "un-romance" as opposed to "anti-romance". Some viewers want Romance, either to be promoted or undercut. I don't need it. But I examine it if it's there.
I'm a realist, and my primary interest is examining the characters as though they really inhabit the worlds their shows are set in. Hence my expectations for a character's romantic life being "she's 17, she's in HS, of course it's not going to last". Hence my assumption that Buffy, at age 22 as of the S7 finale, has yet to meet the person she'll marry, if we're required to assume she ultimately does.
From my unromantic perspective - seeing how the relationship falls apart or hearing the author tell me why romance doesn't work - that doesn't interest me. I already expect that. What does interest me, is seeing why they actually would be together in the first place - and to see what values lead to support or conflict between them. (see Ted or Gingerbread) And what are the organic aspects of the characters that make things work or not work - and what it tells us about who they are and need to grow into.
That characters would be together because of lust/ passion/desire - I find obvious and boring. And too often a creative crutch for the writers.
I recognize that shows require ongoing love stories with dramatic tension, as this appeals to a broader base of passionate viewers. I'm not one of them.
no subject
I think we have to tolerate the fact that people do not share our interests. That we are interested in different things. And what may have bored the socks off you, will turn someone else on and vice versa. The difficulty, and I am as guilty of this as you are, is not to judge someone who likes things we hate or that bore us, too harshly. For example - I admittedly have as cranky a relationship with B/A shippers as you appear to have with B/S shippers. ;-) (Which does make discussions on lj, fanboards, and the like dicey at times.)
As for Buffy, I think I'm reading the show differently than you are? And wanting different things from it? And as a result, may be enjoying it more? Because it is giving me what I need. I don't know.
Just finished Lover's Walk, a brilliant episode - in it we see what attracted Buffy to Angel and vice versa - and why they aren't together when Buffy becomes an adult and never will be. If you want to know why - it's said pretty clearly in Lover's Walk.
We fall in love with or become friends with people, tv shows, books, etc.. who give us something we want and need. When they stop providing us with that something or when we finally come to grips with the fact that they can't ever give it to us and are not who we thought they were, the relationship falls apart.
Buffy says to Angel at the end of Lover's Walk - I can't be with you, I can't ever have what I want from you. It is a speech she gives him in different ways across four seasons. And likewise, Buffy cannot give Angel what he wants, he will never get from Buffy what Cordy gives him in LA.
In the episode Ted - Ted wants a woman who will stay with him, care for him, support him, and cater to his needs. His wife left him when he got cancer. So he made a robot Ted to get her back. He could not accept the fact that she could not give him what he needed. Could not be what he thought she was. And he in turn could not be what she needed.
Relationships are successful when both parties get what they want from the relationship, and see each other clearly, without projecting their own desires/fantasies onto each other. When they can tolerate each others short-comings, compromise, and realize that even though they aren't getting everything they may desire from the relationship - they are getting what they need from it - and that is enough.
The difference between a mature and immature relationship or lust/infatuation vs. love - is when the two parties see each other as they truly are and not what they want each other to be, and accept each other as they are, faults intact. Love can't happen at first sight - that is physical attraction.
You have to have trust, you have to know the person - see them at their worst and their best and still forgive their faults, for real lasting love to happen.
Giles and Jenny have that type of relationship in Season 2, it is done in sketches, as do Tara and Willow in Season 6, and
Willow and Kennedy in the comic books. They are to date the only ones who we see with that type of relationship, (with the possible exception of Buffy and Spike by the very end of S7 and Angel/Cordy in S3, before she is taken from him - but I know you vehmentally disagree with me on that point and I really see nothing to be gained in arguing it. Since the characters cannot be together, because they are both, to a degree an adult retelling, at least that is how I see it again your mileage may differ, of the B/A relationship.)
no subject
This is because most discussions of shows require talk of romance, and assume the universes are closed loops. People operate with the fundamental assumptions that (1) characters must eventually be permanently paired up and (2) that these pairings must be limited among those already in the cast. These are very flawed assumptions.
They are particularly flawed when considering pairings of immortal/eternally young characters with mortals - where milennia of human mythology weighs in against that. And particularly in the case of Angel - whose curse - makes any serious, long-term loving relationship a non-starter. Were that barrier removed, it might be quite possible for Angel & Buffy to work on a functional relationship. But again, this is a non-starter.
And indeed, because I know it is a non-starter, I never have to get distracted worrying whether they'll ever make it as a couple or whether the story should or should not have endorsed or rejected them. Who winds up with whom, isn't the point for this viewer.
But I reject the idea that they are fundamentally unsuited for each other, simply because it is not possible to conduct a viable test. The metaphysics of their universe preclude it, and they are unromantic enough to not pursue it.
My real concerns are not "ship" based, but based in character and storytelling. What makes the Buffy & Angel relationship interesting, is that their interactions prompt tests of their value systems. These characters will have compelling internal and external conflict whenever they interact, and that is good for telling a story. The functioning of mundane aspects of their relationship (i.e. everyday stuff) is not of paramount importance to the story, but this should not lead us to assume they either could or could not work.
Fixating on talking about why they are doomed is a distraction to what I consider more interesting storytelling. Just like fixating on why Buffy & Spike should be so great together - which shippers are prone to do - distracted greatly from any valuable analysis of Spike's character.
no subject
Where I think we do disagree is in which relationship is the most interesting to follow and why. I think Angel is far more interesting when you remove Buffy from the mix. That the B/A relationship distracts from the analysis of Angel's character. His character is far more complex when you forget Buffy. He's less the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde cliche we see in Beauty and the Beasts. And I do agree, Spike is by far, more interesting when he is not with Buffy or not analyzed primarily in context with Buffy. The problem with analyzing either character in context with just Buffy is the tendency to romanticize the character, to excuse their faults.
Angel - is set up early on in BS1 as the worst out thing out there. He taught and created Spike and Dru.
He was to stand at the Master's Right hand and was the Master's favorite son. But he got a gyspey blood curse guaranteed to make him suffer for the horrors he did.
Angel is proud of being the worst thing ever, while at the same time deeply guilty and in pain over it.
He wishes he didn't have a soul - "do you have any idea how hard it is to have done what I've done and to care?" Very complicated and dark character.
Spike likewise is a very complicated and dark character.
I find Angel and Spike's relationship to be far more interesting than Angel and Buffy's. Heck Angel and Darla were more interesting.
That is where you and I differ. You are as annoyed by the fixation on Buffy and Spike and why they should be so great together, as I am by the fixation on Buffy and Angel and why they should be together which shippers are prone to do and distract equally from any valuable analysis of Angel's character.
That said - my post above is not analysis of Angel's character nor Spike's - it was and I think I was pretty clear about it - a post about how Whedon satirizes romantic love specifically in the episodes of Beauty and the Beasts, IOHFY, and other episodes. It was in my lj, not on a posting board, and several people enjoyed it, actually everyone but two appeared to. It was also lj-cut, so I didn't make you read all of it. If you didn't enjoy it, fine. If you disagree, fine. But hey, I stand by the post and why I wrote it - which was to discuss how untempered love or letting love rule you is a destructive thing and why I'm loving my re-watch of the series.