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Men Don't Leave - Meta on the theme of paternalism in BTVS (Angel, Riley, Spike, Anya, Darla, Walsh)
The title of this post is taken from a film entitled Men Don't Leave starring Jessica Lang, the film is about a single mother with two sons coping with the death of her husband. The film's title is meant to be taken ironically. Because of course men do leave. It is also to a degree a comment the mother makes to her sons - don't leave me, men don't leave.
This meta was inspired by a comment made in a post/essay by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bilixi (at least I think it is bilixi) about how men keep leaving Buffy, and why the character of Spike seemed to stay by her side. In addition, I just finished watching the Buffy episodes Family and Fool for Love, along with the Angel episode Darla. All three episodes deal with the theme of paternalism as well as the somewhat contradictory theme of men leaving their wives, mothers, daughters and girlfriends - but from different points of view and in different ways.
One of things I love most about BTVS is the dramatic and thematic use of irony. We live in a paternalistic society - yet, as mentioned above, men abandon women. They do not always have a choice - we all die after all, as Spike does in Buffy S7, and as the father does in the film Men Don't Leave.
Starting chronically with Angel and ending with Spike, the meta below is meant to examine these themes and how they relate to both the characters and the series as whole, or at least up to this point.
From the moment we meet Angel - he is a man/vampire in conflict. He is stalking/pursuing Buffy - in order to help her and redeem himself, but at the same time he lurks outside The Master's headquarters. In The WISH - we learn that Angel actually arrived in Sunnydale before Buffy did and waited for her, the Master, we learn from Welcome to the Harvest has been stuck in Sunnydale for years, since the 1930's and Angel has been there before - so Angel may have actually followed Buffy with the knowledge that the Master is there, he's move to Sunnydale like his relationship with Darla ends up being about both Buffy and The Master.
Angel does not take direct action against the Master, he doesn't actively help Buffy, he just provides information and somewhat snarkily at that. Half-surprised when she succeeds. Throughout a good portion of S1 - Angel states in asides - "you are going to lose" or "you'll be lucky to defeat the Master". In the episode "Angel" - we learn that Angelus was amongst the Master's favorites, that the Master saw Angelus standing beside him one day, his favorite "son". Darla goes after "Angel" in an attempt to turn him back to his old ways - she thinks if she gets him to kill Buffy - then he will turn. Instead, Angel stakes Darla, and Buffy and Angel become closer.
The episode Darla explains why Angel reacts the way he does to Buffy in the episode in Season 1 entitled "Angel" and later in "Suprise". In Darla - we see that Darla continuously rejected Angel when he got a soul. She cast him out. He was not welcome. He kept seeking her out - as he states in the episode, in response to Wes's comment that you didn't seek redemption for a 100 years after you got a soul, "no, all I did was look for and hunt for her."
Darla herself is portrayed in the episode as little more than a high-class "whore". She was a whore in life and is one in death or undeath. Pimped out by The Master to obtain sons. By Angelus's side she is a high-class "madam" with her two hustlers/whores - Spike and Dru dancing around them. She is not in charge, even Spike in his memories, does not reference Darla as being in charge, although from Darla's pov she is.
But it is clear from this episode that this is little more than an illusion. Wolf Ram and Hart bring Darla back to life to torment Angel. Darla now ensouled and human, is cracking up, she has to deal with 400 years worth of memories. She just wants the pain to stop. But she is literally WRH's whore. They are using her to lead Angel to them. To get to Angel. Just as the Master used her to lead Angelus to him.
Darla throughout the series is shown choosing men to take care of her, pamper her, or be her "father"/"protector". She may resent them for it, but seeks them out regardless. In this episode she jumps from one male protector to the next, betraying them, yet clinging to them at the same time. The mother they dread yet yearn for. The Master who turns her, yet loses her to the young Stallion, Angelus. Angelus who loses her to the Master -when the Master beckons, Angel tells William the Bloody in "Destiny" (ATS S5), Darla comes a running. And finally Lindsey - who she seeks comfort from, yet races from to get Angel to turn her. To go back to the good old days.
At first glance - it appears that Darla is the stronger, the femme fatal, the nasty mother...if you watch the episode closely, behind Darla stands Holland Manners on the one end, and the Master on the other - manipulating her like a puppet. She's their whore. And Angel's seeking of her, is in some respects similar to his seeking of Buffy, a direct response to the father figures that he wishes to either rebell against or obtain approval from. As is demonstrated in the following episodes: The Prodigal - where in flashbacks, we notice that neither Darla nor his mother and sisters are the focus, but rather his father - who he can never quite please, Harvest - where he is shown lurking outside the Master's digs, and later in Out of Sight, Out of Mind - where he brings information to Giles not Buffy regarding her doom. In Pangs he does the same thing - goes to Giles, and not Buffy. For her own good he states.
Then in I Will Always Remember You - he goes to God the Father (the PTB) via the oracles, or to Doyle - not Buffy to discuss what must be done. And when a demon is still afoot, human, Angel goes after it, without waking up Buffy to help and plan - even though she is clearly stronger than he is. In Amends - it is not Buffy's forgiveness that he is desperate for nor is it what he did to her specifically that haunts him, but what he did Giles and it is to Giles that he first makes his plea. Buffy's forgiveness means little to Angel in Amends - it is not her's he seeks, so much as it is God's and Giles. As Darla tells him in The Prodigal - now that your father is dead, you will never be able to resolve it. He kills his father for much the same reason that he tortures Giles and Holtz - because of his rejection.
Angel always leaves the women who love him. He is doomed to abandon or destroy them. The reason has a lot to do with his paternalistic view of the world. His need yet at the same time rejection of the father. He leaves Buffy for her own good, yet much like Darla before her, he cannot stay away. He lurks in the shadows, stalking her, spying on her, the need to claim her fighting with the need to let her be. She is the mother that he competes with the father for, the mother he wishes to turn into a daughter, to protect, to control, yet at the same time must leave - he rationalizes for her own good, but it is more complicated than that. When Angelus loses his soul - his obsession to remake Buffy into a version of himself - as Drusilla states to do to her, what he did to me. To control her. It is no accident that all the women who stay with Angel for any length of time turn into monsters or die. Fred becomes Illyria, Darla is turned back into a vampire, Cordelia gives birth to Jasmine and is killed in the process and Nina becomes a werewolf.
The woman is a monsterous thing that must be tamed, a shrew. Or she is a girl, who must be protected. The father, the male authoritity figure on the other hand is who we seek forgiveness from, who we rebell from. If we are to be redeemed? It is the father that must do the forgiving - whether this be Holtz or the PTB. Jasmine can't redeem Angel any more than Buffy or Cordelia can, only one who can is dead - his own father, who died years ago at his hands.
But Angel is not a simple character and the writers delve deeper into the theme, showing how he is caught between two women in his quest to seek solace, comfort, connection and family, whether it be his own or someone elses. Family as demonstrated in the episode Family with Tara - can be a tricky thing. We often create our own when the one in which we are given at birth fails us. In the episode Darla - Darla gives Angel a baby and askes him to prove he is willing to be a part of their family (the fanged four) again by killing it. It is twist on the old, here is our child, prove you are willing to stay and take care of it. Here it's this is a child, prove that you are one of us again and kill it, drink it's blood, make it our supper. So that we can be a family. But Angel can't, he flees. The sequence is repeated much later, in Lullaby, where Darla kills herself to save the child inside her and gives the child to Angel, a male child who is allegedly good. And it is repeated again in S4, where Connor watches Cordy die as she gives birth to Jasmine - a female child who turns out to be the negative aspect of the mother - the mother men fear. Each time Angel is confronted with familial duties - the results are dire.
Angel is also caught between two men - his own human father and his vampire one. But it is the vampire one who accepts him - who applauds him as Angelus, while the human condemns him. This may explain why Angelus never seeks his soul, never seeks redemption - he is in control as a demon, he is the maker, and he obtains the approval of his vampire sires. But as a human or even an ensouled vampire - he can't quite get the patriarchial approval he desires. So as Angelus he seeks out those who remind him most of his human father and torture them - remove all they care about, just as he did to his own, repeating the same patterns. We see him do it with Holtz and later with Giles. It is Wes that joins him, while Giles remains aloof. And it is Giles' approval he clearly desires. And Holtz's. Both of whom won't and can't quite forgive him.
From Buffy's pov - Angel is not much different than her deadbeat Dad, Hank Summers. Who left her mother. And doesn't call. Off with a secretary in Italy living the cliche. He is not really in her life. And he does not really respect or trust her. If he did, he would have given her the information not Giles in not one but three different episodes in the series (Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Pangs, and What's My Line). Also, with Buffy, Angel always puts his own wishes and desires first - as Xander puts it, you killed the girl to save your own butt. He doesn't mean to, it is not deliberate. It is how he was made. He even states as much in Amends - it is the man who must be killed, I want to be with you, to seek comfort and solace from you. But I know it will only lead to pain. With Darla it is the same thing - he doesn't so much wish to give her solace, as he wishes to take it from her. In the episode, Darla, Angel desperately wants to help her...but can he? Any more than he really could help Buffy? The male vigilante does not save the world, so much as doom it. The paternalistic society does not lead to peace. It's an illusion. Looked at from one perspective - it's lovely, romantic, the guy protecting the girl a la The Twilight novels or TruBlood or Moonlight...from another, a horror show a la the episode Surprise, Becoming, and Graduation Day.
Darla is not all that different than Anya. Anyanka who was taken by D'Hoffryn, turned into a vengeance demon, then pimped out to kill. One of his girls. Same with Darla, she's the Master's girl, dressed in her catholic school uniform, marching his drummer. Anyanka and Darla cater to the male paternalistic worldview - they are the male property. With no real identity outside of it. Darla seeks vengeance on the johns and men who abused her in life as a vampire, yet by the same token continues to want their protection. Anya is the same way.
Anya and Darla have no identity outside of the men who surround them. Anya is either Xander's girlfriend, avenging women who have been scorned, or D'Hoffryn's whore. Darla is either Angel's soulmate/girlfriend, avenging women who have been used, or the Master's whore. Both love to be taken care of. Both adore the paternalistic society in which they were born, yet have been a victim of. If you compare Selfless to Darla - both women were used by men, Darla a whore is dying of syphilisis by a John, who used her and cast her aside, while Anya has been cheated on, both get approached by a devil, who whisks them away into a life of luxury and immortality. Darla and Anya are whores. Whores in both the literal and metaphorical sense - they cater to the male ego, they promote the paternalistic society in which we live. And both, suffer the consequences - Darla is literally staked by her children, rejected by them, in favor of a woman their children feel they can protect and/or control. Replaced as it were. And Anya is left at the altar, and in the battle field, little more than a footnote. While in contrast, Buffy who does not cater to the male ego or the paternalistic society, climbs into the light, smiling.
Riley in some respects acts as a transitional character between two thematic tropes, the man who leaves the woman in the lurch and seeks approval from the father - seeing her, the woman, as merely something he takes care of or protects, seeks solace from, an object that either inspires, grants him life, solace and bliss - the moment that changes, he's gone and ...the other side of the spectrum - man who seeks out the powerful woman, yearns for her, kills her, fucks her (often confusing the two), wants her approval and guidance and worships at her feet, and would never voluntarily leave her. (Basically Daddy's Boy vs. Mommy's Boy). Riley is our happy medium between the two extreems and as a result the one who is human not a vampire.
In Season 4 - we rarely see Joyce Summers, but we do see a lot of Lindsey Walsh and Riley.
While in Season 5, Riley slowly leaves the series, seen less and less as part of the gang and Buffy's life, yet Joyce who also leaves is quite prominent. In S4 - it is all about Riley, to Buffy, who at the time is on the rebound from Angel. Riley is a good counter - he is human. Riley is more or less what life may have been like with Angel if Angel had been or chosen to stay human. It's no surprise that Angel and Riley hate each other on sight, nor that both see each other as a major threat, yet neither are that worried about nor seem to really hate Spike in the same manner.
Riley like Angel has his mother issues. He resents catering to Walsh. Walsh creates the monster in Riley. She turns him into the super-solider. Yet like Darla, Walsh is answering to a male power. She is the paternal powerstructure's tool. They are using her to create their army. She does not have power in her own right. It is ironic that she like Darla is killed by her own creation. Adam kills Walsh, much as Connor ends up rejecting Darla, and earlier his birth kills her. She like Darla is the paternalistic order's brood mare - just as Cordelia is. All three have sons that are empowered to lead or add to that order.
When Riley discovers what Walsh is and what the military/Initiaive is - his world crumbles and much like Angel before him - he seeks solace in Buffy. He wishes to be by her side, the center of her universe, as Angel had once been. But Buffy has been there, done that, and is moving on. She has a sister now and a mother who is sick. She does not have the time or energy to put a man first, like she did when she was in high school. Riley wants a new mother in Buffy, someone to set his rules, to trust him completely, who will allow him to protect her, comfort her.
In this way, he is a bit like Spike - who seeks the same thing and has been seeking it since he lost Drusilla. But Riley does and will leave. Riley has left his mother before. He calls her, but she is not in his life. No more than Walsh totally was. He left Walsh. With Buffy, he can be the father, the protector. But she doesn't really let him. She shuts him out, relying on Giles instead.
And unable to understand why she let Angel in, even Dracula - close enough to taste her, Riley leaps to the conclusion that she must not love him. He had been the center of her life in season 4, but as Buffy notes to Willow - it got out of hand, she allowed her interest in Riley to overtake her life, much as she had with Angel before him. The paternalistic view is the man has a life outside the woman, a mission, a job, while the woman does not. In Riley's world - he was the demon hunter with the girlfriend complaining that he's never around or acting much as Sam does in AYW - as the perfect sidekick/support. He takes lead, they banter, and they are demon hunters together, after he saved her life.
Before and after Buffy - Riley like Angel has that life. He and his friends in the Initiative talk about women as if they were playthings, or people they had to protect. Walsh, the only woman in their unit, is masculain in aspect, and all business. Almost robotic. After the Initiative - Graham tells him that he went from being the mission to being the mission's boyfriend. He feels that he has no other role. And to his credit, he is not completely wrong about that. Buffy has shut him out. She does not trust him with the information about Dawn. Nor should she - Riley's first inclination in regards to Glory is to call in The Initiative, and Buffy knows the Initiative is watching Riley. If they found out about Dawn - they would take her hostage and experiment on her. That is, after all, what they did with OZ. Or they'd kill her - much as the Knights and even Giles later proposes to do. Dawn is worth nothing to them. She's just a girl.
Her inability to trust Riley is later supported by his inability to trust her - demonstrated in S4, when he withholds information from her on more than one occassion - giving it to Xander or his Initiative friends. Or when he seeks out the vampire whores to feel needed/wanted, which he does not feel with Buffy.
When Riley does finally leave - he does so immediately after she discovers him at the vampire whorehouse. He gives her ultimatium - I'm leaving for parts unknown on a mission with the military at this time and date. If you want me to stay, come see me off and beg me to. Otherwise we are done. Xander tells her to run to him - to make him stay. But Buffy is too late. She always would be. She can no more stop Riley taking off in his helicopter than she could stop Angel from rewinding time in I Will Always Remember You. Both men have made their decisions without her. And they both tell her their decisions are about her, about protecting her or in response to her lack of interest in them - but in truth they aren't. In both cases, the men leave for much the same reason Giles and Hank both leave - to find themselves, to be heroes. Buffy is the hero here and in her company they are increasingly placed in the role of damsel or sidekick.
In the first part of Out of my Mind - Buffy is upset with both Riley and Spike for fighting demons. This is my job. It is a hilarious twist on the guy chiding his girlfriend when she gets a job similar to his or goes out to fight along side him. And when Riley goes out to kill the vampire who hurt her in Fool for Love, Buffy chides him for it in the later episodes. He is weak and kitteny - and he can't handle it. He can't handle being what he considers the woman in the relationship. Any more than Angel could. Neither can handle Buffy being the hero, while they watch from the sidelines or while she has to rush to their rescue. It's a theme that winds its way throughout the series from Season 1- Season 7. Xander on more than one occassion, specifically Halloween - is upset when Buffy saves him from a guy who he was attempting to defend her honor against. And Spike in Something Blue - more or less states the same sentiment. It's our role - how dare you take it away from us, they seem to be saying.
Riley's departure much like Angel's is preordained. It would be against their nature to stay with Buffy. She doesn't need their protection. And she cannot provide either with the comfort and solace that they seek. So they leave, and she is left behind, wondering why.
While Angel and Riley cater to a degree to the paternalistic society and authority. Spike pushes against it. As he states in Fool For Love - once I became a vampire, I was through with society's rules. Spike pushes back on the male authority figures. As the Mayor states at one point - Spike's in town again. Oh he was a fun one. We never knew what he'd do next. But I can't afford it - get rid of him. In contrast - the Mayor wanted Faith to turn Angel into Angelus - because Angelus - he knew would cater to his needs, maybe rebel, but in a way that would be useful to him.
Contrast Out of Sight Out of Mind - where Angel visits Giles and provides him with information on Buffy's prophecy with Yoko Factor, where Spike visits Giles but states that he wants to see the slayer. These are just two examples - there are more, such as Beneath You, Sleeper, Amends, Becoming, and Pangs - where Angel demonstrates respect for Giles and Spike scoffs. Granted Spike initially goes to Giles in Pangs, much as Angel does - for information and help, not directly to Buffy, although I'm guessing he knew Buffy was there when he went. And it is directly to Buffy not Giles that he makes his plea. Buffy - Spike has a history with, as far back as Becoming, and he knows she defeated the Initiative when he and Willow were almost taken captive - so it makes sense he'd go there. At any rate, in most of the episodes I've seen up to and including Fool for Love, as well as the episodes that come after - specifically Touched, Spike states that Buffy is the boss, she has surpassed Giles, and Giles is inconsequential. Giles - Spike seems to state has abandoned her.
Giles did in a way abandon Buffy in S6. And he does so again in S7, when he elects Faith as leader and pushes Buffy aside. Spike unlike Angel, does not appear to respect Giles much at all. If any thing he appears to undercut his authority and scoff at it, much as he does the Watcher Council.
Unlike Riley, he has little patience for the "male" authority. Possibly because his own father left his mother? Or maybe because Angelus did - when he got a soul - leave the Fanged four? Both Riley and Angel leave Buffy, along with Giles, leaving Spike as the only older male to stand with her, to help her fight, outside of Xander.
Spike does what he wants and doesn't cater to anyone - well except for the mother figure or the woman he loves. He does cater to her. As we see in the episode, Darla, where Spike is clearly acting in the role of her charge. Same deal with his own mother - she was in charge. And Spike unlike Angel and Riley, does not willingly leave these women, so much as he is taken from them or dumped.
From Schoolhard - the first episode in which Spike appears - we see that he is devoted to Drusilla. Drusilla rules him. The other guiding principle in his life is fighting slayers. Strong women. He is a bit of sexual predator, a serial rapist if you prefer - but the question is why? I think the sexual predator/serial rapist aspect is to a degree the horrific aspect of his devotion to women, his fear of leaving them and his resentment that he can't leave them, that he is their plaything, their whipping boy, their sex toy - their dog and their fool.
In Fool For Love - his first thought before Dru bits him is "I must get back to mother". When he becomes a vampire - the first thing he does, or so we are told in Lies My Parents Told ME is attempt to heal his sickly mother by granting her eternal life as a vampire. Her reaction to his act horrifies him and he stakes her. She, the woman, he would sacrifice his own life to help - has rejected him. In much the same way, actually, that Darla rejects Angel in the episode Darla. Haunted by her rejection and his reaction to it - he appears to have a death wish and goes after slayers, strong female hunters who can kill vampires and have killed hundreds. He wants to kill them, to taste them, to inhabit their skin yet by the same token, he doesn't appear to mind if they take him out in the fight because if they do so - it would be from his point of view apt penance. He's not really suicidal - but as he tells Buffy in Fool For Love - Eternity is a long time and we keep coming...the death wish he informs her that she has, may in fact be his own - Spike is a master at transference. Much of what he says, insults included are reflections of his feelings towards himself. You poofter - he calls Angel. Or don't be a Pratt (his own last name - Pratt). In the episode In the Dark, he calls Angel a nancyboy, a lap dog, defanged...yet that is what he himself has been called by Dru after Becoming, as he himself states in Lover's Walk - "Dru said I'd gone soft!"
As Spike tells Buffy in Fool for Love - as a vampire you have nothing to fear, except one girl, the slayer. Most vampires avoided her like the plague, but I was obsessed, I sought her out. Angelus tells him about the slayer in an attempt to get him behave much as a big brother would tell the little one about the boogey man. But Spike, who clearly has a death wish, loves the idea. When Angelus tells him - Spike has gotten them into a nasty bit of trouble in a nearby town and they've fled to the cellars, where Spike is trying to pick a fight with Angelus, get him to stake him or hurt him. He claims he doesn't want to die, seems to have a surivial mechanism, but part of him does. As he tells Buffy - I loved being a vampire, but I wasn't afraid of death. When Drusilla offers him "death" he stands there and accepts her embrace, screaming out in pain, but not fighting her off, eyes open not closed.
And when Nikki knocks him to the ground - he's happy. Gleeful. After he tells Buffy she has a death wish, mocks her, he asks, practically begs her to beat him up, to stake him.
When she doesn't, he goes to kiss her. It's almost as if he flirts with death. Skipping close to the surface. Flirting with the devil mother to consume him whole, much as his own threatened to do when he turned her into a demon.
When his human mother rejects him, he replaces her, much as Angelus did, with the new one - Drusilla. And like Darla, Dru takes Spike home to meet her Daddy, Angelus, who adopts him more or less. Spike similarly rejects and bonds with Angelus as Angelus rejected and bonded with the Master. Except for one thing - in Becoming, Spike does something that Angel doesn't really do, he plots with Buffy to bring about the father/Angelus' downfall in order, or so he claims, to save Dru, to save the world. Angel never quite does that, not without a lot of prodding from Xander. Why does he do it when Angel does not? A better question may be why Spike spends most of his time with Joyce, and respects Joyce, while Angel spends his with Giles and respects Giles?
Spike takes devotion to the mother to the extreme. In the controversial episode Lies My Parents Told ME - we see the horrific consequences. Spike loves his mother to death. He is afraid of leaving her. Yet resentful of the fact that he can't. In Lies - he and Wood rail at one another, and Spike tells Wood that he doesn't give a piss about Wood's mother, that Wood's mother never loved him and put the mission first. It's an odd statement, because Spike's actions say the opposite - Spike does not kill Wood, in fact prior to the episode, Spike saves Wood's life at least twice. And he tells Buffy, not Wood, that he gave the man a pass on account of the fact that I killed his mother. He doesn't hide it from Buffy - why should he? He after all told her exactly how and why he killed Wood's mother, Nikki in Fool for Love, although I doubt he knew she was a mother at the time, nor do I think it would have made a difference. In fact if he had known, he probably would have been more turned on and more intent on killing her. The fact that he kills her the same way as Angelus kills JEnny, by snapping her neck not by biting her, is interesting. Then takes her coat. And sees her coat forever afterward as a power source.
I think Spike lied to Wood, he did care about Nikki. He sought Nikki out. She was not a random kill. And of all the hundreds he has killed - she's the one he remembers. She came the closest to killing him. He tells Buffy that she was hot. And with Wood - his quote about slayers and the mission - is once again a quote of transference - it is not Wood he is talking to so much as himself. What he is saying is Buffy can never be there for him, the mission will always come first. She can never be devoted to him in the same way. He is a but one more tool in her arsenal. He respects her for it, yet resents himself. His comment to Wood in Lies is more derogatory about Wood, than it is Wood's mother. He is slamming Wood and possibly himself for depending on these women, needing them, requiring their love, devotion, approval. Poor Momma's boy, Wood, your mother never loved you because she had a job, had a life outside of you. Mine did, because she had nothing but me - but I ended up turning her into a vampire and staking her - because of it.
The discussion in Fool for Love between Spike and Buffy reminds me a great deal of the one between Clarice and Hannibal Lector in the film Silence of the Lambs. In this film, Clarice goes to the caged serial killer, Hannibal the Cannibal, to obtain information on how another killer, similar to himself, is killing his victims. Hannibal much like Spike is prevented from hurting Clarice physically, so what follows is a psychological battle of words and wits. Hannibal is turned on by Clarice, differently than Spike is turned on by Buffy, and feels to a degree a certain odd protectiveness/mentor relationship. Just as Spike states "Lesson the First", Hannibal acts as if he were teaching Clarice. And just as Spike demands buffalo wings or hops, or bits of information in return, stretching out their time together - Hannibal requests bits and pieces from Clarice. It's not free - we want a bit of you in return.
Both interactions are creepy, yet also compelling and erotic. I only compare them - because it hit me while watching the episode last night that interaction between the characters is a dance of words and movement, much as Clarice and Hannbals interactions are. Spike does not tell Buffy everything. And the duality of Spike's own nature, which she may or may not be aware of - is to a degree why he is turned on by her and why he reacts to her differently than others may. He is both romantic/poet and killer.
I am in no way stating that Spike is like Hannibal Lector, what I'm stating is that the scene is reminiscent of that one - two predators circling one another, battling one another with words, tempting each other. Both are the hero dancing with the devil in the dim moonlight in order to obtain information for their own and others survival. Fool for Love is also reminiscent of the conversation between Buffy and Dracula - where Dracula attempts to seduce her and she says gross. The difference is in Fool for Love - they drop the blood metaphor - Spike doesn't offer her his blood, nor does he attempt to bite her, he attempts to kiss her instead. The result is more or less the same. Buffy reacts in revulsion.
Fool for Love ends on an ironic note. But one that makes sense, when you consider Spike's issues and what is happening in Buffy's life. In Lies and Sleeper we hear the entire song, Early One Morning, which triggers Spike to seduce and kill women and men. It pulls out the killer in him. The gist of the song - an old English Ballad, is a young maiden weeping about a man who has left her. She cries in the refrain: Oh Never Leave Me, how can you treat a poor maiden so". One can't help but wonder if Spike's mother had been left in such a manner. Spike is her support - at 26, he is still beside her. At her feet. Her caretaker. And he hates himself for it. He hates his devotion, much as she does. They resent each other. They resent their interdependence. His speech to Wood is in some respects one about himself and his own Mom. He looks at Wood's and see's a hero, a hero whose jacket he has taken as his own, and can't bear to part with. But his own mother...his memories of her turn him into a killer, a rapist, a monster not unlike Kralik in Helpless, except with Spike - there's love there, he did love his mother.
When Drusilla turns Spike, and makes him strong, and he attempts to make his mother strong - he inadvertently sets them both free to act out that painful resentment. They love and hate one another at the same time. His relationship with Drusilla is similar - he is devoted to her, when she gets sick, he moves heaven and earth to make her well - but when he is sick and then summarily replaced by Angelus, he moves heaven and earth to remove her from Angelus's grasp, losing her and to a degree himself in the process - much as he lost his own mother - by making a deal with another woman, a slayer, and then trying to go back to Dru after the fact. He doesn't leave Dru for Buffy. But, in his heart he probably did. Physically, however, he never does - not until she literally forces him too, as his human biological mother did.
Spike can't leave a woman. It is against his nature. They have to kill him or physically and repeatedly push him away. Then and only then does he stay away. He keeps coming back, but only up to a point. And the reason is a simple one - he hates men who leave. Hates himself for leaving. And by the same token hates women for making him feel that way, for making him stay.
Spike is the sons in the film "Men Don't Leave". He is the result of the father's leave-taking. When Angelus leaves Darla, Spike hangs around or so we're told, helping her wreck venegance on the Gypsey village and he caters to her whims, more or less. Darla thinks little of him, but he won't leave Dru and he won't leave Darla...without being pushed. With Harmony - he leaves, but returns, repeatedly. It is ultimately Harmony who leaves him and at his pushing. He pushes her away from him. He can barely stand her. And one occassion, when he's convinced she has the magical gem of Amaraa - stakes her. But he sticks around as well. And when she seeks his help - he allows her in, if she'll have sex with him, although I think he'd have let her in any way.
In Season 7 - Spike unlike Angel in S3, asks Buffy if he should leave and tells her up front what he has been discussing with Giles and the others regarding the First Evil. Perhaps, he suggests, I'm a danger to you and should go. She tells him not to leave and when he asks why, she tells him that she is not ready for him to go. He accepts that and stays. In S6, when he leaves to seek a soul - he does so in order to come back to her, to be able to be with her without fearing that he will hurt her again. He, perhaps niavely, believes that a soul is enough to prevent such a reocurrence. When he gets one - he doesn't try to come back, he tries to stay away, ashamed and aware of his own monsterous nature. He had a speech, he says, but he knows she'll never understand it. The Beneath You sequence in Fool for Love is repeated endlessly in Spike's story and most notably in the episode "Beneath You" - and says volumes about how Spike may well view patriarchy and men in general - as worms, beneath your feet, worthless.
He is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Angel when it comes to mothers, even if they share many attributes in common. Like Angel, it's Spike's own self-hatred that often gets in his way. As he tells Buffy, as evil and wretched as I was back then, I never truly hated myself not like I do now. He may have been less aware of it. The demon may even twisted it. Although I think what he hated was the man who catered to his sickly mother - the poofter, yet in an ironic twist, also and equally hated the man who left her in the lurch, and the one who killed her - the one he names Spike. Xander - is similar - he hates the part of himself who leaves Anya at the altar, and the one who cheated on Cordelia. The father he can't stand, who abuses his mother. And like Spike did before the soul, he pushes and prods Buffy to kill him. It's really only in S4 that he seems to fear being staked and is into self-preservation. By S5, he doubts they will kill him, and by S6 sort of wishes they would.
Buffy, Buffy, Buffy...Everywhere I go, everywhere I look...I'm her pet project - drive Spike around the bend!
He tells Harmony in Out of My Mind. And he is out of his mind. Turned on by a slayer. Sympathetic to her needs. Yet, yet, as Angelus obsessed about Buffy and Giles without a soul, so does Spike obsess about Buffy, Dawn and Joyce. Angelus treats Joyce much as he treated his real mom in life, as inconsequential - it is Giles that he goes after and tortures, first by killing Jenny, then by torturing himself. Spike in contrast, seeks to become friends with Joyce and Dawn, to protect them, and treats Giles as inconsequential. When he gets frustrated with Buffy, goes nuts - he goes directly after her, not through friends or family. He clearly doesn't understand why Angelus does it in Passion - where he states - why not kill the slayer, going after her old man will only get you a brassed off slayer.
Spike also, unlike Angel and Riley, does not take men seriously - Xander, he scoffs at- and when Xander stands up Anya at the altar - no one is more critical of the act than Spike. Giles - he makes fun of. Riley - same deal. Angel - also. But Willow, he treats with respect. OZ - is dogboy, he laughs at OZ. But Tara...he aids, proving she's not a demon and exposing her "family" in the episode Family for who they are. Even though, as he does it, he admits what they are doing is bloody brilliant. Spike hates and loves women, what he hates about them is the fact that he seriously appears to think they are on a higher plain. He is matriarchial as opposed to patriarchial.
It is women who control him and mold him. Walsh who puts the behavior modification chip in his brain. Buffy who insists it be removed. It is Dru he goes against Angelus for, and it is Buffy that he gets a soul for. To a degree it can be argued that he goes after Buffy because Angel loved her, but I doubt it. Angel is important to him and he does to a degree lurk in Angel's footsteps, but I think it was Buffy who inspired him just as it was Drusilla before her - Buffy is all the things that he loves in woman. He tells her as much in Touched - where he states - "you are the one. A hundred-plus years and you are the only thing I've been certain of."
And when he finally does leave, with her permission, and in a blaze of glory - he does so in a way that sets her free. She is not chasing him or looking for him in the shadows, as she did with Riley and Angel. Instead she is racing to the sky above him, leaving him beneath her in the womb of the earth. It's an odd take on an old mythos - the male lover sacrificed to the mother, so we can live. He burns brightly like the WickerMan in the Pagan Legends, crucified, his evil demonic self gone, as Buffy moves upwards to the light. Chosen is in a way the culmination of an on-going fight between two mothers over Spike and the world. Buffy, the slayer, the first evil - the hellmouth who produced him. It's his soul that chooses, and the demon mother is burned out much as he turned her to dust in Lies My Parents Told Me or rejected her in Crush, he chooses instead the woman who races to the sky, who takes on both gender roles and does not follow only one. Who is neither matriarchial nor patriarchial - who flies against the paternalistic order.
Buffy grants everyone a choice. Gives her power to all. In Fool for Love - she scoffs at his idea of a death wish and says he is beneath her, does not accept his transference, and in Into the Woods - she scoffs at Riley's need for rules, order, and the endzone.
When Buffy gets involved with Spike, it is not Spike who leaves, but Buffy herself. She is finally able to leave the father behind. She is finally able to look at Giles and state, I don't need you anymore - I appreciate your guidance, but I do not need you as an authority, as a Watcher, as a father. I can operate without the paternal net. In episode after episode, we see Buffy leaving Spike. Buffy moving out of his crypt into the light. Until the final one, where she leaves him behind a burning bright effulgent light of his own choosing. And Spike to his credit, does not return to her after he dies, he goes his own way, he sets her free and adopts a new mother/warrior princess in Fred/Illyria to follow.
[ETA: the above has been significantly edited since I posted it this morning.]
This meta was inspired by a comment made in a post/essay by
bilixi (at least I think it is bilixi) about how men keep leaving Buffy, and why the character of Spike seemed to stay by her side. In addition, I just finished watching the Buffy episodes Family and Fool for Love, along with the Angel episode Darla. All three episodes deal with the theme of paternalism as well as the somewhat contradictory theme of men leaving their wives, mothers, daughters and girlfriends - but from different points of view and in different ways. One of things I love most about BTVS is the dramatic and thematic use of irony. We live in a paternalistic society - yet, as mentioned above, men abandon women. They do not always have a choice - we all die after all, as Spike does in Buffy S7, and as the father does in the film Men Don't Leave.
Starting chronically with Angel and ending with Spike, the meta below is meant to examine these themes and how they relate to both the characters and the series as whole, or at least up to this point.
From the moment we meet Angel - he is a man/vampire in conflict. He is stalking/pursuing Buffy - in order to help her and redeem himself, but at the same time he lurks outside The Master's headquarters. In The WISH - we learn that Angel actually arrived in Sunnydale before Buffy did and waited for her, the Master, we learn from Welcome to the Harvest has been stuck in Sunnydale for years, since the 1930's and Angel has been there before - so Angel may have actually followed Buffy with the knowledge that the Master is there, he's move to Sunnydale like his relationship with Darla ends up being about both Buffy and The Master.
Angel does not take direct action against the Master, he doesn't actively help Buffy, he just provides information and somewhat snarkily at that. Half-surprised when she succeeds. Throughout a good portion of S1 - Angel states in asides - "you are going to lose" or "you'll be lucky to defeat the Master". In the episode "Angel" - we learn that Angelus was amongst the Master's favorites, that the Master saw Angelus standing beside him one day, his favorite "son". Darla goes after "Angel" in an attempt to turn him back to his old ways - she thinks if she gets him to kill Buffy - then he will turn. Instead, Angel stakes Darla, and Buffy and Angel become closer.
The episode Darla explains why Angel reacts the way he does to Buffy in the episode in Season 1 entitled "Angel" and later in "Suprise". In Darla - we see that Darla continuously rejected Angel when he got a soul. She cast him out. He was not welcome. He kept seeking her out - as he states in the episode, in response to Wes's comment that you didn't seek redemption for a 100 years after you got a soul, "no, all I did was look for and hunt for her."
Darla herself is portrayed in the episode as little more than a high-class "whore". She was a whore in life and is one in death or undeath. Pimped out by The Master to obtain sons. By Angelus's side she is a high-class "madam" with her two hustlers/whores - Spike and Dru dancing around them. She is not in charge, even Spike in his memories, does not reference Darla as being in charge, although from Darla's pov she is.
But it is clear from this episode that this is little more than an illusion. Wolf Ram and Hart bring Darla back to life to torment Angel. Darla now ensouled and human, is cracking up, she has to deal with 400 years worth of memories. She just wants the pain to stop. But she is literally WRH's whore. They are using her to lead Angel to them. To get to Angel. Just as the Master used her to lead Angelus to him.
Darla throughout the series is shown choosing men to take care of her, pamper her, or be her "father"/"protector". She may resent them for it, but seeks them out regardless. In this episode she jumps from one male protector to the next, betraying them, yet clinging to them at the same time. The mother they dread yet yearn for. The Master who turns her, yet loses her to the young Stallion, Angelus. Angelus who loses her to the Master -when the Master beckons, Angel tells William the Bloody in "Destiny" (ATS S5), Darla comes a running. And finally Lindsey - who she seeks comfort from, yet races from to get Angel to turn her. To go back to the good old days.
At first glance - it appears that Darla is the stronger, the femme fatal, the nasty mother...if you watch the episode closely, behind Darla stands Holland Manners on the one end, and the Master on the other - manipulating her like a puppet. She's their whore. And Angel's seeking of her, is in some respects similar to his seeking of Buffy, a direct response to the father figures that he wishes to either rebell against or obtain approval from. As is demonstrated in the following episodes: The Prodigal - where in flashbacks, we notice that neither Darla nor his mother and sisters are the focus, but rather his father - who he can never quite please, Harvest - where he is shown lurking outside the Master's digs, and later in Out of Sight, Out of Mind - where he brings information to Giles not Buffy regarding her doom. In Pangs he does the same thing - goes to Giles, and not Buffy. For her own good he states.
Then in I Will Always Remember You - he goes to God the Father (the PTB) via the oracles, or to Doyle - not Buffy to discuss what must be done. And when a demon is still afoot, human, Angel goes after it, without waking up Buffy to help and plan - even though she is clearly stronger than he is. In Amends - it is not Buffy's forgiveness that he is desperate for nor is it what he did to her specifically that haunts him, but what he did Giles and it is to Giles that he first makes his plea. Buffy's forgiveness means little to Angel in Amends - it is not her's he seeks, so much as it is God's and Giles. As Darla tells him in The Prodigal - now that your father is dead, you will never be able to resolve it. He kills his father for much the same reason that he tortures Giles and Holtz - because of his rejection.
Angel always leaves the women who love him. He is doomed to abandon or destroy them. The reason has a lot to do with his paternalistic view of the world. His need yet at the same time rejection of the father. He leaves Buffy for her own good, yet much like Darla before her, he cannot stay away. He lurks in the shadows, stalking her, spying on her, the need to claim her fighting with the need to let her be. She is the mother that he competes with the father for, the mother he wishes to turn into a daughter, to protect, to control, yet at the same time must leave - he rationalizes for her own good, but it is more complicated than that. When Angelus loses his soul - his obsession to remake Buffy into a version of himself - as Drusilla states to do to her, what he did to me. To control her. It is no accident that all the women who stay with Angel for any length of time turn into monsters or die. Fred becomes Illyria, Darla is turned back into a vampire, Cordelia gives birth to Jasmine and is killed in the process and Nina becomes a werewolf.
The woman is a monsterous thing that must be tamed, a shrew. Or she is a girl, who must be protected. The father, the male authoritity figure on the other hand is who we seek forgiveness from, who we rebell from. If we are to be redeemed? It is the father that must do the forgiving - whether this be Holtz or the PTB. Jasmine can't redeem Angel any more than Buffy or Cordelia can, only one who can is dead - his own father, who died years ago at his hands.
But Angel is not a simple character and the writers delve deeper into the theme, showing how he is caught between two women in his quest to seek solace, comfort, connection and family, whether it be his own or someone elses. Family as demonstrated in the episode Family with Tara - can be a tricky thing. We often create our own when the one in which we are given at birth fails us. In the episode Darla - Darla gives Angel a baby and askes him to prove he is willing to be a part of their family (the fanged four) again by killing it. It is twist on the old, here is our child, prove you are willing to stay and take care of it. Here it's this is a child, prove that you are one of us again and kill it, drink it's blood, make it our supper. So that we can be a family. But Angel can't, he flees. The sequence is repeated much later, in Lullaby, where Darla kills herself to save the child inside her and gives the child to Angel, a male child who is allegedly good. And it is repeated again in S4, where Connor watches Cordy die as she gives birth to Jasmine - a female child who turns out to be the negative aspect of the mother - the mother men fear. Each time Angel is confronted with familial duties - the results are dire.
Angel is also caught between two men - his own human father and his vampire one. But it is the vampire one who accepts him - who applauds him as Angelus, while the human condemns him. This may explain why Angelus never seeks his soul, never seeks redemption - he is in control as a demon, he is the maker, and he obtains the approval of his vampire sires. But as a human or even an ensouled vampire - he can't quite get the patriarchial approval he desires. So as Angelus he seeks out those who remind him most of his human father and torture them - remove all they care about, just as he did to his own, repeating the same patterns. We see him do it with Holtz and later with Giles. It is Wes that joins him, while Giles remains aloof. And it is Giles' approval he clearly desires. And Holtz's. Both of whom won't and can't quite forgive him.
From Buffy's pov - Angel is not much different than her deadbeat Dad, Hank Summers. Who left her mother. And doesn't call. Off with a secretary in Italy living the cliche. He is not really in her life. And he does not really respect or trust her. If he did, he would have given her the information not Giles in not one but three different episodes in the series (Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Pangs, and What's My Line). Also, with Buffy, Angel always puts his own wishes and desires first - as Xander puts it, you killed the girl to save your own butt. He doesn't mean to, it is not deliberate. It is how he was made. He even states as much in Amends - it is the man who must be killed, I want to be with you, to seek comfort and solace from you. But I know it will only lead to pain. With Darla it is the same thing - he doesn't so much wish to give her solace, as he wishes to take it from her. In the episode, Darla, Angel desperately wants to help her...but can he? Any more than he really could help Buffy? The male vigilante does not save the world, so much as doom it. The paternalistic society does not lead to peace. It's an illusion. Looked at from one perspective - it's lovely, romantic, the guy protecting the girl a la The Twilight novels or TruBlood or Moonlight...from another, a horror show a la the episode Surprise, Becoming, and Graduation Day.
Darla is not all that different than Anya. Anyanka who was taken by D'Hoffryn, turned into a vengeance demon, then pimped out to kill. One of his girls. Same with Darla, she's the Master's girl, dressed in her catholic school uniform, marching his drummer. Anyanka and Darla cater to the male paternalistic worldview - they are the male property. With no real identity outside of it. Darla seeks vengeance on the johns and men who abused her in life as a vampire, yet by the same token continues to want their protection. Anya is the same way.
Anya and Darla have no identity outside of the men who surround them. Anya is either Xander's girlfriend, avenging women who have been scorned, or D'Hoffryn's whore. Darla is either Angel's soulmate/girlfriend, avenging women who have been used, or the Master's whore. Both love to be taken care of. Both adore the paternalistic society in which they were born, yet have been a victim of. If you compare Selfless to Darla - both women were used by men, Darla a whore is dying of syphilisis by a John, who used her and cast her aside, while Anya has been cheated on, both get approached by a devil, who whisks them away into a life of luxury and immortality. Darla and Anya are whores. Whores in both the literal and metaphorical sense - they cater to the male ego, they promote the paternalistic society in which we live. And both, suffer the consequences - Darla is literally staked by her children, rejected by them, in favor of a woman their children feel they can protect and/or control. Replaced as it were. And Anya is left at the altar, and in the battle field, little more than a footnote. While in contrast, Buffy who does not cater to the male ego or the paternalistic society, climbs into the light, smiling.
Riley in some respects acts as a transitional character between two thematic tropes, the man who leaves the woman in the lurch and seeks approval from the father - seeing her, the woman, as merely something he takes care of or protects, seeks solace from, an object that either inspires, grants him life, solace and bliss - the moment that changes, he's gone and ...the other side of the spectrum - man who seeks out the powerful woman, yearns for her, kills her, fucks her (often confusing the two), wants her approval and guidance and worships at her feet, and would never voluntarily leave her. (Basically Daddy's Boy vs. Mommy's Boy). Riley is our happy medium between the two extreems and as a result the one who is human not a vampire.
In Season 4 - we rarely see Joyce Summers, but we do see a lot of Lindsey Walsh and Riley.
While in Season 5, Riley slowly leaves the series, seen less and less as part of the gang and Buffy's life, yet Joyce who also leaves is quite prominent. In S4 - it is all about Riley, to Buffy, who at the time is on the rebound from Angel. Riley is a good counter - he is human. Riley is more or less what life may have been like with Angel if Angel had been or chosen to stay human. It's no surprise that Angel and Riley hate each other on sight, nor that both see each other as a major threat, yet neither are that worried about nor seem to really hate Spike in the same manner.
Riley like Angel has his mother issues. He resents catering to Walsh. Walsh creates the monster in Riley. She turns him into the super-solider. Yet like Darla, Walsh is answering to a male power. She is the paternal powerstructure's tool. They are using her to create their army. She does not have power in her own right. It is ironic that she like Darla is killed by her own creation. Adam kills Walsh, much as Connor ends up rejecting Darla, and earlier his birth kills her. She like Darla is the paternalistic order's brood mare - just as Cordelia is. All three have sons that are empowered to lead or add to that order.
When Riley discovers what Walsh is and what the military/Initiaive is - his world crumbles and much like Angel before him - he seeks solace in Buffy. He wishes to be by her side, the center of her universe, as Angel had once been. But Buffy has been there, done that, and is moving on. She has a sister now and a mother who is sick. She does not have the time or energy to put a man first, like she did when she was in high school. Riley wants a new mother in Buffy, someone to set his rules, to trust him completely, who will allow him to protect her, comfort her.
In this way, he is a bit like Spike - who seeks the same thing and has been seeking it since he lost Drusilla. But Riley does and will leave. Riley has left his mother before. He calls her, but she is not in his life. No more than Walsh totally was. He left Walsh. With Buffy, he can be the father, the protector. But she doesn't really let him. She shuts him out, relying on Giles instead.
And unable to understand why she let Angel in, even Dracula - close enough to taste her, Riley leaps to the conclusion that she must not love him. He had been the center of her life in season 4, but as Buffy notes to Willow - it got out of hand, she allowed her interest in Riley to overtake her life, much as she had with Angel before him. The paternalistic view is the man has a life outside the woman, a mission, a job, while the woman does not. In Riley's world - he was the demon hunter with the girlfriend complaining that he's never around or acting much as Sam does in AYW - as the perfect sidekick/support. He takes lead, they banter, and they are demon hunters together, after he saved her life.
Before and after Buffy - Riley like Angel has that life. He and his friends in the Initiative talk about women as if they were playthings, or people they had to protect. Walsh, the only woman in their unit, is masculain in aspect, and all business. Almost robotic. After the Initiative - Graham tells him that he went from being the mission to being the mission's boyfriend. He feels that he has no other role. And to his credit, he is not completely wrong about that. Buffy has shut him out. She does not trust him with the information about Dawn. Nor should she - Riley's first inclination in regards to Glory is to call in The Initiative, and Buffy knows the Initiative is watching Riley. If they found out about Dawn - they would take her hostage and experiment on her. That is, after all, what they did with OZ. Or they'd kill her - much as the Knights and even Giles later proposes to do. Dawn is worth nothing to them. She's just a girl.
Her inability to trust Riley is later supported by his inability to trust her - demonstrated in S4, when he withholds information from her on more than one occassion - giving it to Xander or his Initiative friends. Or when he seeks out the vampire whores to feel needed/wanted, which he does not feel with Buffy.
When Riley does finally leave - he does so immediately after she discovers him at the vampire whorehouse. He gives her ultimatium - I'm leaving for parts unknown on a mission with the military at this time and date. If you want me to stay, come see me off and beg me to. Otherwise we are done. Xander tells her to run to him - to make him stay. But Buffy is too late. She always would be. She can no more stop Riley taking off in his helicopter than she could stop Angel from rewinding time in I Will Always Remember You. Both men have made their decisions without her. And they both tell her their decisions are about her, about protecting her or in response to her lack of interest in them - but in truth they aren't. In both cases, the men leave for much the same reason Giles and Hank both leave - to find themselves, to be heroes. Buffy is the hero here and in her company they are increasingly placed in the role of damsel or sidekick.
In the first part of Out of my Mind - Buffy is upset with both Riley and Spike for fighting demons. This is my job. It is a hilarious twist on the guy chiding his girlfriend when she gets a job similar to his or goes out to fight along side him. And when Riley goes out to kill the vampire who hurt her in Fool for Love, Buffy chides him for it in the later episodes. He is weak and kitteny - and he can't handle it. He can't handle being what he considers the woman in the relationship. Any more than Angel could. Neither can handle Buffy being the hero, while they watch from the sidelines or while she has to rush to their rescue. It's a theme that winds its way throughout the series from Season 1- Season 7. Xander on more than one occassion, specifically Halloween - is upset when Buffy saves him from a guy who he was attempting to defend her honor against. And Spike in Something Blue - more or less states the same sentiment. It's our role - how dare you take it away from us, they seem to be saying.
Riley's departure much like Angel's is preordained. It would be against their nature to stay with Buffy. She doesn't need their protection. And she cannot provide either with the comfort and solace that they seek. So they leave, and she is left behind, wondering why.
While Angel and Riley cater to a degree to the paternalistic society and authority. Spike pushes against it. As he states in Fool For Love - once I became a vampire, I was through with society's rules. Spike pushes back on the male authority figures. As the Mayor states at one point - Spike's in town again. Oh he was a fun one. We never knew what he'd do next. But I can't afford it - get rid of him. In contrast - the Mayor wanted Faith to turn Angel into Angelus - because Angelus - he knew would cater to his needs, maybe rebel, but in a way that would be useful to him.
Contrast Out of Sight Out of Mind - where Angel visits Giles and provides him with information on Buffy's prophecy with Yoko Factor, where Spike visits Giles but states that he wants to see the slayer. These are just two examples - there are more, such as Beneath You, Sleeper, Amends, Becoming, and Pangs - where Angel demonstrates respect for Giles and Spike scoffs. Granted Spike initially goes to Giles in Pangs, much as Angel does - for information and help, not directly to Buffy, although I'm guessing he knew Buffy was there when he went. And it is directly to Buffy not Giles that he makes his plea. Buffy - Spike has a history with, as far back as Becoming, and he knows she defeated the Initiative when he and Willow were almost taken captive - so it makes sense he'd go there. At any rate, in most of the episodes I've seen up to and including Fool for Love, as well as the episodes that come after - specifically Touched, Spike states that Buffy is the boss, she has surpassed Giles, and Giles is inconsequential. Giles - Spike seems to state has abandoned her.
Giles did in a way abandon Buffy in S6. And he does so again in S7, when he elects Faith as leader and pushes Buffy aside. Spike unlike Angel, does not appear to respect Giles much at all. If any thing he appears to undercut his authority and scoff at it, much as he does the Watcher Council.
Unlike Riley, he has little patience for the "male" authority. Possibly because his own father left his mother? Or maybe because Angelus did - when he got a soul - leave the Fanged four? Both Riley and Angel leave Buffy, along with Giles, leaving Spike as the only older male to stand with her, to help her fight, outside of Xander.
Spike does what he wants and doesn't cater to anyone - well except for the mother figure or the woman he loves. He does cater to her. As we see in the episode, Darla, where Spike is clearly acting in the role of her charge. Same deal with his own mother - she was in charge. And Spike unlike Angel and Riley, does not willingly leave these women, so much as he is taken from them or dumped.
From Schoolhard - the first episode in which Spike appears - we see that he is devoted to Drusilla. Drusilla rules him. The other guiding principle in his life is fighting slayers. Strong women. He is a bit of sexual predator, a serial rapist if you prefer - but the question is why? I think the sexual predator/serial rapist aspect is to a degree the horrific aspect of his devotion to women, his fear of leaving them and his resentment that he can't leave them, that he is their plaything, their whipping boy, their sex toy - their dog and their fool.
In Fool For Love - his first thought before Dru bits him is "I must get back to mother". When he becomes a vampire - the first thing he does, or so we are told in Lies My Parents Told ME is attempt to heal his sickly mother by granting her eternal life as a vampire. Her reaction to his act horrifies him and he stakes her. She, the woman, he would sacrifice his own life to help - has rejected him. In much the same way, actually, that Darla rejects Angel in the episode Darla. Haunted by her rejection and his reaction to it - he appears to have a death wish and goes after slayers, strong female hunters who can kill vampires and have killed hundreds. He wants to kill them, to taste them, to inhabit their skin yet by the same token, he doesn't appear to mind if they take him out in the fight because if they do so - it would be from his point of view apt penance. He's not really suicidal - but as he tells Buffy in Fool For Love - Eternity is a long time and we keep coming...the death wish he informs her that she has, may in fact be his own - Spike is a master at transference. Much of what he says, insults included are reflections of his feelings towards himself. You poofter - he calls Angel. Or don't be a Pratt (his own last name - Pratt). In the episode In the Dark, he calls Angel a nancyboy, a lap dog, defanged...yet that is what he himself has been called by Dru after Becoming, as he himself states in Lover's Walk - "Dru said I'd gone soft!"
As Spike tells Buffy in Fool for Love - as a vampire you have nothing to fear, except one girl, the slayer. Most vampires avoided her like the plague, but I was obsessed, I sought her out. Angelus tells him about the slayer in an attempt to get him behave much as a big brother would tell the little one about the boogey man. But Spike, who clearly has a death wish, loves the idea. When Angelus tells him - Spike has gotten them into a nasty bit of trouble in a nearby town and they've fled to the cellars, where Spike is trying to pick a fight with Angelus, get him to stake him or hurt him. He claims he doesn't want to die, seems to have a surivial mechanism, but part of him does. As he tells Buffy - I loved being a vampire, but I wasn't afraid of death. When Drusilla offers him "death" he stands there and accepts her embrace, screaming out in pain, but not fighting her off, eyes open not closed.
And when Nikki knocks him to the ground - he's happy. Gleeful. After he tells Buffy she has a death wish, mocks her, he asks, practically begs her to beat him up, to stake him.
When she doesn't, he goes to kiss her. It's almost as if he flirts with death. Skipping close to the surface. Flirting with the devil mother to consume him whole, much as his own threatened to do when he turned her into a demon.
When his human mother rejects him, he replaces her, much as Angelus did, with the new one - Drusilla. And like Darla, Dru takes Spike home to meet her Daddy, Angelus, who adopts him more or less. Spike similarly rejects and bonds with Angelus as Angelus rejected and bonded with the Master. Except for one thing - in Becoming, Spike does something that Angel doesn't really do, he plots with Buffy to bring about the father/Angelus' downfall in order, or so he claims, to save Dru, to save the world. Angel never quite does that, not without a lot of prodding from Xander. Why does he do it when Angel does not? A better question may be why Spike spends most of his time with Joyce, and respects Joyce, while Angel spends his with Giles and respects Giles?
Spike takes devotion to the mother to the extreme. In the controversial episode Lies My Parents Told ME - we see the horrific consequences. Spike loves his mother to death. He is afraid of leaving her. Yet resentful of the fact that he can't. In Lies - he and Wood rail at one another, and Spike tells Wood that he doesn't give a piss about Wood's mother, that Wood's mother never loved him and put the mission first. It's an odd statement, because Spike's actions say the opposite - Spike does not kill Wood, in fact prior to the episode, Spike saves Wood's life at least twice. And he tells Buffy, not Wood, that he gave the man a pass on account of the fact that I killed his mother. He doesn't hide it from Buffy - why should he? He after all told her exactly how and why he killed Wood's mother, Nikki in Fool for Love, although I doubt he knew she was a mother at the time, nor do I think it would have made a difference. In fact if he had known, he probably would have been more turned on and more intent on killing her. The fact that he kills her the same way as Angelus kills JEnny, by snapping her neck not by biting her, is interesting. Then takes her coat. And sees her coat forever afterward as a power source.
I think Spike lied to Wood, he did care about Nikki. He sought Nikki out. She was not a random kill. And of all the hundreds he has killed - she's the one he remembers. She came the closest to killing him. He tells Buffy that she was hot. And with Wood - his quote about slayers and the mission - is once again a quote of transference - it is not Wood he is talking to so much as himself. What he is saying is Buffy can never be there for him, the mission will always come first. She can never be devoted to him in the same way. He is a but one more tool in her arsenal. He respects her for it, yet resents himself. His comment to Wood in Lies is more derogatory about Wood, than it is Wood's mother. He is slamming Wood and possibly himself for depending on these women, needing them, requiring their love, devotion, approval. Poor Momma's boy, Wood, your mother never loved you because she had a job, had a life outside of you. Mine did, because she had nothing but me - but I ended up turning her into a vampire and staking her - because of it.
The discussion in Fool for Love between Spike and Buffy reminds me a great deal of the one between Clarice and Hannibal Lector in the film Silence of the Lambs. In this film, Clarice goes to the caged serial killer, Hannibal the Cannibal, to obtain information on how another killer, similar to himself, is killing his victims. Hannibal much like Spike is prevented from hurting Clarice physically, so what follows is a psychological battle of words and wits. Hannibal is turned on by Clarice, differently than Spike is turned on by Buffy, and feels to a degree a certain odd protectiveness/mentor relationship. Just as Spike states "Lesson the First", Hannibal acts as if he were teaching Clarice. And just as Spike demands buffalo wings or hops, or bits of information in return, stretching out their time together - Hannibal requests bits and pieces from Clarice. It's not free - we want a bit of you in return.
Both interactions are creepy, yet also compelling and erotic. I only compare them - because it hit me while watching the episode last night that interaction between the characters is a dance of words and movement, much as Clarice and Hannbals interactions are. Spike does not tell Buffy everything. And the duality of Spike's own nature, which she may or may not be aware of - is to a degree why he is turned on by her and why he reacts to her differently than others may. He is both romantic/poet and killer.
I am in no way stating that Spike is like Hannibal Lector, what I'm stating is that the scene is reminiscent of that one - two predators circling one another, battling one another with words, tempting each other. Both are the hero dancing with the devil in the dim moonlight in order to obtain information for their own and others survival. Fool for Love is also reminiscent of the conversation between Buffy and Dracula - where Dracula attempts to seduce her and she says gross. The difference is in Fool for Love - they drop the blood metaphor - Spike doesn't offer her his blood, nor does he attempt to bite her, he attempts to kiss her instead. The result is more or less the same. Buffy reacts in revulsion.
Fool for Love ends on an ironic note. But one that makes sense, when you consider Spike's issues and what is happening in Buffy's life. In Lies and Sleeper we hear the entire song, Early One Morning, which triggers Spike to seduce and kill women and men. It pulls out the killer in him. The gist of the song - an old English Ballad, is a young maiden weeping about a man who has left her. She cries in the refrain: Oh Never Leave Me, how can you treat a poor maiden so". One can't help but wonder if Spike's mother had been left in such a manner. Spike is her support - at 26, he is still beside her. At her feet. Her caretaker. And he hates himself for it. He hates his devotion, much as she does. They resent each other. They resent their interdependence. His speech to Wood is in some respects one about himself and his own Mom. He looks at Wood's and see's a hero, a hero whose jacket he has taken as his own, and can't bear to part with. But his own mother...his memories of her turn him into a killer, a rapist, a monster not unlike Kralik in Helpless, except with Spike - there's love there, he did love his mother.
When Drusilla turns Spike, and makes him strong, and he attempts to make his mother strong - he inadvertently sets them both free to act out that painful resentment. They love and hate one another at the same time. His relationship with Drusilla is similar - he is devoted to her, when she gets sick, he moves heaven and earth to make her well - but when he is sick and then summarily replaced by Angelus, he moves heaven and earth to remove her from Angelus's grasp, losing her and to a degree himself in the process - much as he lost his own mother - by making a deal with another woman, a slayer, and then trying to go back to Dru after the fact. He doesn't leave Dru for Buffy. But, in his heart he probably did. Physically, however, he never does - not until she literally forces him too, as his human biological mother did.
Spike can't leave a woman. It is against his nature. They have to kill him or physically and repeatedly push him away. Then and only then does he stay away. He keeps coming back, but only up to a point. And the reason is a simple one - he hates men who leave. Hates himself for leaving. And by the same token hates women for making him feel that way, for making him stay.
Spike is the sons in the film "Men Don't Leave". He is the result of the father's leave-taking. When Angelus leaves Darla, Spike hangs around or so we're told, helping her wreck venegance on the Gypsey village and he caters to her whims, more or less. Darla thinks little of him, but he won't leave Dru and he won't leave Darla...without being pushed. With Harmony - he leaves, but returns, repeatedly. It is ultimately Harmony who leaves him and at his pushing. He pushes her away from him. He can barely stand her. And one occassion, when he's convinced she has the magical gem of Amaraa - stakes her. But he sticks around as well. And when she seeks his help - he allows her in, if she'll have sex with him, although I think he'd have let her in any way.
In Season 7 - Spike unlike Angel in S3, asks Buffy if he should leave and tells her up front what he has been discussing with Giles and the others regarding the First Evil. Perhaps, he suggests, I'm a danger to you and should go. She tells him not to leave and when he asks why, she tells him that she is not ready for him to go. He accepts that and stays. In S6, when he leaves to seek a soul - he does so in order to come back to her, to be able to be with her without fearing that he will hurt her again. He, perhaps niavely, believes that a soul is enough to prevent such a reocurrence. When he gets one - he doesn't try to come back, he tries to stay away, ashamed and aware of his own monsterous nature. He had a speech, he says, but he knows she'll never understand it. The Beneath You sequence in Fool for Love is repeated endlessly in Spike's story and most notably in the episode "Beneath You" - and says volumes about how Spike may well view patriarchy and men in general - as worms, beneath your feet, worthless.
He is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Angel when it comes to mothers, even if they share many attributes in common. Like Angel, it's Spike's own self-hatred that often gets in his way. As he tells Buffy, as evil and wretched as I was back then, I never truly hated myself not like I do now. He may have been less aware of it. The demon may even twisted it. Although I think what he hated was the man who catered to his sickly mother - the poofter, yet in an ironic twist, also and equally hated the man who left her in the lurch, and the one who killed her - the one he names Spike. Xander - is similar - he hates the part of himself who leaves Anya at the altar, and the one who cheated on Cordelia. The father he can't stand, who abuses his mother. And like Spike did before the soul, he pushes and prods Buffy to kill him. It's really only in S4 that he seems to fear being staked and is into self-preservation. By S5, he doubts they will kill him, and by S6 sort of wishes they would.
Buffy, Buffy, Buffy...Everywhere I go, everywhere I look...I'm her pet project - drive Spike around the bend!
He tells Harmony in Out of My Mind. And he is out of his mind. Turned on by a slayer. Sympathetic to her needs. Yet, yet, as Angelus obsessed about Buffy and Giles without a soul, so does Spike obsess about Buffy, Dawn and Joyce. Angelus treats Joyce much as he treated his real mom in life, as inconsequential - it is Giles that he goes after and tortures, first by killing Jenny, then by torturing himself. Spike in contrast, seeks to become friends with Joyce and Dawn, to protect them, and treats Giles as inconsequential. When he gets frustrated with Buffy, goes nuts - he goes directly after her, not through friends or family. He clearly doesn't understand why Angelus does it in Passion - where he states - why not kill the slayer, going after her old man will only get you a brassed off slayer.
Spike also, unlike Angel and Riley, does not take men seriously - Xander, he scoffs at- and when Xander stands up Anya at the altar - no one is more critical of the act than Spike. Giles - he makes fun of. Riley - same deal. Angel - also. But Willow, he treats with respect. OZ - is dogboy, he laughs at OZ. But Tara...he aids, proving she's not a demon and exposing her "family" in the episode Family for who they are. Even though, as he does it, he admits what they are doing is bloody brilliant. Spike hates and loves women, what he hates about them is the fact that he seriously appears to think they are on a higher plain. He is matriarchial as opposed to patriarchial.
It is women who control him and mold him. Walsh who puts the behavior modification chip in his brain. Buffy who insists it be removed. It is Dru he goes against Angelus for, and it is Buffy that he gets a soul for. To a degree it can be argued that he goes after Buffy because Angel loved her, but I doubt it. Angel is important to him and he does to a degree lurk in Angel's footsteps, but I think it was Buffy who inspired him just as it was Drusilla before her - Buffy is all the things that he loves in woman. He tells her as much in Touched - where he states - "you are the one. A hundred-plus years and you are the only thing I've been certain of."
And when he finally does leave, with her permission, and in a blaze of glory - he does so in a way that sets her free. She is not chasing him or looking for him in the shadows, as she did with Riley and Angel. Instead she is racing to the sky above him, leaving him beneath her in the womb of the earth. It's an odd take on an old mythos - the male lover sacrificed to the mother, so we can live. He burns brightly like the WickerMan in the Pagan Legends, crucified, his evil demonic self gone, as Buffy moves upwards to the light. Chosen is in a way the culmination of an on-going fight between two mothers over Spike and the world. Buffy, the slayer, the first evil - the hellmouth who produced him. It's his soul that chooses, and the demon mother is burned out much as he turned her to dust in Lies My Parents Told Me or rejected her in Crush, he chooses instead the woman who races to the sky, who takes on both gender roles and does not follow only one. Who is neither matriarchial nor patriarchial - who flies against the paternalistic order.
Buffy grants everyone a choice. Gives her power to all. In Fool for Love - she scoffs at his idea of a death wish and says he is beneath her, does not accept his transference, and in Into the Woods - she scoffs at Riley's need for rules, order, and the endzone.
When Buffy gets involved with Spike, it is not Spike who leaves, but Buffy herself. She is finally able to leave the father behind. She is finally able to look at Giles and state, I don't need you anymore - I appreciate your guidance, but I do not need you as an authority, as a Watcher, as a father. I can operate without the paternal net. In episode after episode, we see Buffy leaving Spike. Buffy moving out of his crypt into the light. Until the final one, where she leaves him behind a burning bright effulgent light of his own choosing. And Spike to his credit, does not return to her after he dies, he goes his own way, he sets her free and adopts a new mother/warrior princess in Fred/Illyria to follow.
[ETA: the above has been significantly edited since I posted it this morning.]
no subject
I really agree, if Spike's feelings for Buffy were based only on Angel's desire for her then he would have lost interest when Angel left town... but in fact Spike becomes more obsessed.
After Spike does 'go out in a blaze of glory' at the end of Buffy's S7 I think he felt that anything else would be anticlimactic, that perhaps his relations w/Buffy had peaked.
Even if he hadn't returned as a ghost in Wolfram & Hart, I think that Spike would have still wanted to follow Angel at that time. Because I think Spike was wanting to explore this whole 'hero' thing....
but that would be a different discussion (one about siblings/brothers). I really loved your points about Fathers & boyfriends leaving.... and your discussion about women being pimped out by those Fathers/boyfriends.
I've been rewatching Firefly today and of course Joss carefully made Inara's situation independent, in fact Mal's disapproval serves several purposes since he is not only seen as jealous of her sexual activities, but also he cannot be seen as pimping her in any way (in fact she complains that he takes jobs in remote locations where she can't get work).
And now in Dollhouse EVERYONE is pimping Echo out...
no subject
After you responded and before I read your response, I edited the above post for clarity. So the bit about Inara is removed, because I don't really see her prostitution as equal to Darla and Anya's. Her's seems different somehow. And Mal is definitely not Inara's pimp - if anything he resents her companion status. I agree with your take on that.
There is a heavy theme in Angel, Dollhouse, Buffy, and Firefly about the objectification of woman and pimping out of people. It is examined from multiple angles. I like it best in Buffy for some reason, I can't quite decide if it is because Buffy is the powerful one and not the victim, or if it's the humor.
Regarding Spike? I think he sums it up best with Harmony in Harm's Way - when he says that he was almost on the ship to track her down, when he realized that it would be wrong to go after her. That it would sort of undo everything he did in Chosen. Take away the meaning of what he did. Which was ultimately to set her free. To let her go. And to let himself go.
She no longer needed him and he no longer needed her.
It was time for him to travel down his own path - which lay at this point with Angel. Faith for similar reasons, leaves Angel and goes back to Buffy.
no subject
Well Buffy was clearly always the one with the most power, Buffy consistently wins fights w/Angel and Spike.. and it is repeated often that she does what Giles says, only when she was planning on doing it anyway.... So we never really see her as a victim, we rarely see her badly hurt. But we see Dru & Darla set on fire, and a number of times Cordy was put in the hospital by the manipulations of her visions. Most of the women are victimized in ways that are painful to any viewer who identifies with them. So clearly we are better off identifying with Buffy! Plus I'm always in favor of the funny.
I think this was one reason people didn't warm up to 'Dollhouse' right away, it would be dangerous to identify too much with Echo, she is a victim in too many ways. Even when she is powerful it is only temporary, and when her 'handlers' let her be powerful (that may be changing in season 2... I haven't read any spoilers, but clearly she hadn't forgotten everything from Omega).
People exploit each other, you see it everywhere, it is in every family, in religious communities, and I have to assume it is part of what makes us human.... just not a part we should be proud of. None of us want to be the victims, in fact I was talking to a friend about Neil Gaiman's books... some of his main characters are too weak, they seem too vulnerable, so that reading the book makes me nervous (I'm afraid of being hurt, identifying with a character who gets hurt). But in 'American Gods' the main character is very strong and tough, and I loved the book because I felt I could handle anything in the persona of this very big capable guy.... I like to feel safe when I read before bedtime!
lol
Active vs. Passive
Actually I think it has more to do with active vs. passive. I tend to be more sympathetic to victims who have taken an active role, and responsibility for their actions. Then for victims who passively sit back and blame everyone, are doormats, and never take any action in their lives.
I think the difference between Buffy and the women in Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse - is that in Buffy we are in Buffy's pov. We aren't seeing her primarily through the male gaze. It is her story, she is not a portion of theirs. They are supporting characters in hers.
She's the lead. She's active. She's not passive.
And, she doesn't allow herself to be victimized. She takes an active role. Even when she loses the fight and she does lose and she is hospitalized and she is attacked, she does not act the victim. She does not cater to men. She does the male role, does his job. Wears jeans. Wears dresses. And most important of all, she takes responsibility - she blames herself not everyone else.
Firefly - which has strong women, is in many ways a male fantasy piece, we see these women through the male gaze. The lead is male, even though it is an ensemble. Dollhouse likewise - even though Echo may be considered the lead - is seen through the gaze of Ballard, Boyd, and Alpha. She has no identity that has not been given to her by Topher, her boyfriend and others. She allows that to happen. She doesn't fight against it, at least not initially. She lets herself be the victim.
I think this was one reason people didn't warm up to 'Dollhouse' right away, it would be dangerous to identify too much with Echo, she is a victim in too many ways. ...
Uh no. That's not my problem with Echo or the Neil Gaiman novels, nor was it my problem with the central character of American Gods - a book that was difficult for me to get through, even though one would think with my folklore and mythology background I'd adore it. I did not hate it. But I did not enjoy it either. I just did not care about the central character - who to men came across as a passive blank slate. And that I think is part of my problem with Dollhouse.
I do not care what happens to Echo. I don't hate Echo. I don't find Echo disturbing. I just don't feel anything for Echo really. There's no emotional investment.
I think the reason I feel that way is two fold - one, Echo is a "passive" character, much like the central characters in Neil Gaiman's books. They aren't victims per se - they are characters who let things happen to them, and when they get unhappy, they react in a passive aggressive manner. There's no complexity to them, no emotional arc per se - they are blank. The writer doesn't appear to care about them outside of their purpose in his plot, so why should I?
Buffy and her friends were not passive characters. None of the characters on that show were passive. They took responsibility for their choices. At least for the most part. And the writers appeared to passionately love all of them, plotting out their arcs over the course of several seasons. Dollhouse -the writers have admitted is less about character and more about an idea, it is a different way of writing a story. It's thematically driven. In season one - they did not know who the characters were and that came across in the episodes. Now, they do.
What intriqued me about Dollhouse is the idea, which is an ambitious one, and that at least one character - Adelle was present. They appeared to know who and what she was. And by the end of the season, after the episode Man on the Street - the writers appeared to know what show they wanted to write and who these characters would become. I began to care a little bit more about them, because the writers cared. The first six or seven episodes? I did not care.
I also think at the heart of dollhouse - is the same question that lay at the heart of the film Serenity - that being passive can as if not more destructive than being aggressive.
Re: Active vs. Passive
I agree w/you about the appeal of Adelle, and the strength of those final episodes....
but I actually felt there was something more to Echo, and it was hinted at in the early episodes:
#1. Ghost Eleanor Penn, we learn, had committed suicide because she couldn't handle the memories of her childhood abuse, but Echo (when downloaded w/Penn's knowledge and experiences) finds some inner strength to face her abuser, and face him down.
#2. The Target Echo has been fitted out as the ultimate prey, AND has been weakened by the drugged water she drinks, but she finds a way to hold her head together and save both herself and Boyd.
#3. Stage Fright Adelle makes it clear that she thinks that Echo acted out way beyond the perimeters of her download when she (Echo) recognized that the singer was mainly a threat to herself, and Echo found a way to change the singer's POV about life.
#4. Gray Hour Echo receives that remote mind wipe, so that she is actually outside of the Dollhouse, in a dangerous situation, when she is in her most vulnerable... But she still finds within herself some strength, announcing that she is NOT broken.
#5. True Believer is my least liked of all the Dollhouse episodes, but we find that Dominic is actually upset enough about Echo's emerging 'self' to want to execute her.
#6. Man on the Street this is when the show finally started to get going, so I don't feel any need to comment on this or the remaining episodes....
My point is just from my POV there were always hints/indications of Echo having more going on than just a passive victim. Obviously these early episodes were failures and lost many potential viewers, but I always saw just enough to keep me interested in what I saw as Echo's growing power and sense of self. But I'm probably one of the few people who thought that way.
Re: Active vs. Passive
I do like Dollhouse and am relieved and happy it go renewed.
But I do not "love" it the way I still love Buffy. It is not a show I feel a desperate need to think about or write about.
I think what we fall in love with in fictional dramas and are comedies is incredibly personal and hard to explain to others.
I have not to date found another tv show or book or film or cultural item that I can love or obsess about or care about the way I do Buffy, I don't know why. It's not like I haven't tried - as you know. I've tried so many books, so many tv shows, so many films...and while I enjoy many of them, In Plain Sight is my favorite at the moment - I don't feel quite the same way. That may change.
Dollhouse does intrigue me. I find my head playing with it. And it hits many issues that I've considered writing about myself and gives me all sorts of ideas.
But..you won't see me writing essays about Dollhouse the way I have about Buffy. I don't love the characters in the same way.
That of course could change - if the series lasts more than two seasons. It did get better and the last five episodes, with exception of the horse one, were quite good.
Re: Active vs. Passive
A lot of people are not fans of Eliza's acting, but personally I always got a lot more from her performances (seeing the desperate lonely little girl within the boasting obnoxious Faith), and I find things to enjoy in her work as Echo.... But having said that, I'll admit that I'm more impressed with her work as a producer than as an actress, and I'm very happy that she shows no signs of being jealous of the attention that other actors are getting on her show. It seems to me that she is happy to have Dollhouse be an ensemble and isn't insisting that everything revolve around herself.
I'm kind of reminded of Cybill Shepherd who was jealous of Bruce Willis achieving a greater stardom than her in 'Moonlighting', and of all the emmy nods Christine Baranski got in 'Cybill'. She seemed to sabotage her own shows because she wasn't willing to realize that there were stronger performances and better actors in those shows.
I think that Eliza deserves credit for getting Joss back to network television, and for being cool about all the jokes made at her expense (she was nominated for an online 'Worst Actress' award). And I thought her scenes with Alan Tudyk were incredibly awesome, she definitely kept up with him, showing tremendous connection with him.... That is pretty impressive for someone who hasn't had the training he has.
Re: Active vs. Passive
Jennifer Garner in Alias.
When I read that, I realized acting like most art forms is deeply subjective. Someone's performance either resonates with you or it simply does not.
Eliza's performance as Faith resonated, her performances as Tru in Tru Calling and as Echo in Dollhouse - do not. It's true with James Marsters as well - the only performance he's done that resonated for me was as Spike - while he was good as Brianiac, he wasn't in much else. And he didn't resonate for me as Brianiac. Same deal with Sarah Michelle Gellar,
Anthony Stewart Head (only Vr5, Chess, those commericials, and Giles - nothing else, including Merlin and Manchild (which I disliked quite a bit).)
I don't dislike Dusku, any more than I dislike Marsters or Boreanze. Her performance in this particular role just doesn't resonate for me. Garner - though - didn't resonate for me at all, which is why I eventually gave up on Alias.
Re: Active vs. Passive
Tru Calling was truly awful, but I blamed the whole repetitive premise and bad writing... they couldn't do what 'Groundhog Day' managed to, and it wasn't Eliza's fault (IMO) that she couldn't break out of that rut they had dug for her. Joss' writing/concept will always keep Dollhouse from getting stuck in a rut.
Good writing will always be at the heart of any good show, the acting can only take things so far... I don't think even the best actor can save a really badly written show .
Re: Active vs. Passive
Good writing will always be at the heart of any good show, the acting can only take things so far... I don't think even the best actor can save a really badly written show .
True, but as many a director/writer and actor has stated a bad actor can and does kill a show.
Regarding Dollhouse? Again, I do like the show. I just am not "fannish" about it. It's rare that I get fannish about things. I'm not a cereal fan like the majority of people I've met on the net And I don't tend to be fannish about celebrities or writers or actors or presidents. I get fannish about the end product. This is hard to explain...
For example - I may fall in love with say Michael Jackson's song Billie Jean and his performance of Billie Jean, but I don't care about Michael Jackson.
Joss Whedon? I enjoy about 75% of his writing. It depends on who he is working with, the project, etc.
For example - I could not watch Alien Ressurection, tried. And I don't see myself going to see Cabin in the Woods. I'm NOT a fan of Joss Whedon, I am a fan of some of his works.
See here's the difference - you are a fan of Joss Whedon. While I'm really only a fan of the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the characters within that series - specifically Spike. I was NEVER a fan of James Marsters - I was a fan of "Spike". I was NEVER a fan of Eliza, I was a fan of "Faith". It's sort of like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden - I am a fan of Harry Dresden but not Jim Butcher. I like the Dresden story, but do not feel compelled to read anything else the writer may write. I might try it.
That said, I do find Whedon to be a fascinating horror writer - who specializes in a category of horror that we rarely see - female psychological horror. He also acts as a bit of a critique of the horror genre. And has a self-deprecating wit that appeals to me. So I have seen or read most of his work. But since Whedon is a collaborative writer - not a writer who works alone a la Jim Butcher or Stephen King or Shirly Jackson, often the quality and appeal of his work depends greatly on who he is collaborating with at the time.
As you know, I'm ambivalent about Tim Minear - whom Whedon clearly adores. The episode Darla - which Minear wrote and directed is just one example. While dark, it ...did not thrill me. I think Mr. Minear has some series issues regarding women and entitlement, and his politics and mine don't quite mesh - this comes out in his writing. But I adore Jane Espenson - who wrote Briar Rose in Dollhouse - one of the best episodes. Minear wrote the episodes that...I hate to say it, did not work for me.
The reason I love Buffy so much is NOT just Whedon. People make the mistake of thinking Whedon did it by himself. This is not true. It was the collaboration.
My favorite seasons are the latter ones - partly because of that collaboration - David Fury/Marti Noxon/Jane Espenson/Doug Petrie/Drew Goddard/Drew Greenberg/Rebecca Rand Kirshner/Stephend DeNight/Nick Marc/David Solomon /and of course the cast. I was less fannish about the earlier seasons which had a different writer lineup. It's also why Angel did not work for me at times - I loved the 5th season, which interestingly enough was run by Jeff Bell and Whedon and David Fury, not by Tim Minear and David Greenwalt.
There's a definite difference in tone in the last season because of that collaborative change. Same with the 4th season of Angel - another favorite - which was Whedon/Fury and a little of Minear. The first three seasons of Angel were heavily Greenwalt and Tim Minear.
Firefly - same thing - it didn't totally work for me, because of the collaboration: Minear/Whedon with just a touch of Espenson and a few others.
So writing is part of it. And I'm careful about following tv writers around, just as I'm careful about actors and directors - the reason? It's a collaboration. And because of that reason - if it works it is often a miracle. Collaborations are very hard to pull off - too many diverse variables that you have no control over.
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I thought Spike's decision not to tell Buffy that he was back from the dead in season 5 of AtS might have smacked a bit of the kind of high-handed paternalism that Angel, Giles, and Riley practiced (as well as Xander in his decision to withhold information from Buffy about the continuing effort to re-ensoul Angel in "Becoming, pt 2"), but I'd prefer to believe that it was instead part of his genuine desire to see her 'live long and prosper' (rather than keep interfering in her life after leaving her, as others had done).
Regarding Spike's "lesson the first" and "here endeth the lesson" language in "Fool for Love", since that's so strongly reminiscent of high church Anglican liturgical language, I could almost see him taking on a priestly role, rather than a teaching role, with Buffy. Contradictory as always, he speaks to her as the voice of authority (the lector or even the priest speaking to the congregation from an elevated position) to the ordinary worshiper, yet what he's REALLY trying to communicate on some level is that he feels himself to be the priest worshiping at her altar -- the altar of the Slayer, the mother and warrior and source of the only validation that really matters to him. His worship may be twisted and perverted alot of the time, but it is always sincere and whole-hearted.
Really fascinating points about Angel, Giles, and Riley as well, but honestly it's the discussion of Spike that always intrigues me most (because, I think, he is the man who doesn't leave -- who is least likely to fall into paternalistic patterns and attempt to make Buffy less than she is).
Regarding Spike..
Regarding your last point - "it's the discussion of Spike that always intriques me the most (because, I think, he is the man who doesn't leave - who is least likely to fall into parenalistic patterns and attempt to make Buffy less than she is.."
Yes, my thoughts exactly. And it may explain in part, why I am so obessed with the character.
But there are people who vehemently disagree.
A lot of people argue that Spike as a "rapist" undercuts the above analysis. (Not everyone sees Spike as a rapist of course, but it depends on how you read the vampire metaphor. My difficulty with the argument is if you decide that the vampirism with Spike is a metaphor for rape, the same goes with Angel/Angelus. You can't decide Spike is a rapist unsouled and leave Angel off the hook, it doesn't work. Same deal with the Spike analysis, you can't say Angelus was a rapist as a vampire and leave Spike off the hook. They did do it for different reasons though.
I think part of the reason Spike is a sexual predator - as a demon, is that this is how the demon twists the feelings inside him regarding his worship of the mother. He can't save the mother, so he kills her himself - because if he kills her, if he fucks her - then he's not the poofter, not the Mommy's boy, not cuckhold, and he doesn't have to watch her die. And if he goes after a vampire slayer - someone who can and most likely will kill him - than he gets to dance with an equal, and be killed by the mother. Spike hates women and loves them. Women! He screams. Women are always fucking up things for Spike! All the trouble he gets into is because of his love for women.
He's the dark monsterous version of the knight errant.
At his worste - he loves the mother to her death, at his best he dies at her bequest.
I thought Spike's decision not to tell Buffy he was back from the dead in Ats S5 smacked a bit of the kind of high-minded paternalism ..
That was my initial inclination as well. But in my rewatch, I don't think that's the intent. I think it has more to do with letting her go. Not coming back again. His comment to Angel in Girl in Question supports it - when he states - "You are Spying on her?"
Angel states for her own good and Spike scoffs, rolling his eyes. And Spike only goes with Angel to Italy, to a)keep Angel on his best behavior, and b)deal with the Immortal whom he equally hates. But in Italy, when Angel rants about cookie dough - Spike winces.
He even more or less tells Andrew that Buffy can take care of herself, that she doesn't need him mucking things up. I think he saw his death in Chosen as a release from his duty to her and to his mother. He can move on. And Andrew in his spiel to Angel and Spike - seems to reinforce that concept.
Spike taking on a priestly role
Interesting - just saw a pattern that I hadn't thought of before: Riley we see going to church, Angelus is clearly religious (catholic in fact), and Spike often is discussing religious ritual in What's my Line, Beneath You and here. Buffy's boyfriends - reference Christian ritual, Willow/Tara reference the goddess ritual or Wiccan.
Spike is embraces a cross, which he does for Buffy. And more than once in crucifixion pose - although it is for the mother not the father, that he crucifies himself. Angel veers away from crosses - fearful of them much like the Master, Spike on the other hand embraces them or picks them up with barely a thought - often burning himself. Irreverant, yet also reverant at the same time. While Riley in contrast is always reverant.
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