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shadowkatIs any one else creeped out by the gavel to gavel media coverage and weird mass adoration/mourning/celebration of Michael Jackson's untimely drug overdose due to the massive stress and insomina, partially brought on by a life trying to please "fans"? He can't even get a private funeral with his family. Yep, like Princess Diana, John Lennon, Elvis, Heath Ledger, Madonna, and so many others before them - Michael was killed by fan worship. Indirectly, true. But as one D-list celebrity once pointed out - trying to constantly please, being constantly in the public eye, constantly adored is toxic to the human soul. Fame - George Clooney stated once upon a time - is the cancer of success. Too true. Fans kill their icons. Then dance on their graves. Ironic that. Also incredibly frightening and creepy. Thank god, thank god, I am not famous. Poor Michael Jackson was never given the choice to be anything but famous. I don't envy him, I don't admire him, I merely pity him. As Stephen King points out in his EW column of Michael Jackson: Jackson was one of those poor souls burdened with too much talent and an insatiable desire to please, but never quite feeling he had. His life and death were tragedies. Not unlike Amadeus Mozart before him. He also reminds me a great deal of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Heath Leadger - who also died tragically and were mourned in creepy ways by their fans. Lonely souls who could not sleep, and never quite knew how to handle their fame. The difference between Jackson and the others - is he didn't get to choose his fate. His parents gave him no choice. I don't see anything worth celebrating here. It's just sad and creepy.
In my rewatching of Buffy - up to The Body now, which I'm not quite ready to watch. Difficult episode. I tend to sob during it. It doesn't effect everyone apparently. But then there are people who cry during Becoming, when Tara dies in Seeing Red, and Spike's death in Chosen, and I never really have. So different strokes for different folks, I guess. At any rate the rewatch has made me aware of several bits - one, a few things are bit head-scratchy, in the, I'm not entirely sure this makes as much sense as the writer's may think category.
Buffy in Crush - wonders what it is she could have done to turn Spike on or lead him on? I didn't do anything she says. Except maybe beat him up a few times. For Spike that's probably first base. She's saying this to her mother by the way. Apparently Joyce and Buffy have had a temporary case of amensia and have completely forgotten that Buffy, just two episodes ago in Checkpoint, took Dawn and Joyce to Spike's and requested that he protect them with his life. Telling him that he was the only one strong enough that she trusted to protect her family. So, wait, you take the two people you care the most about in all the world to Spike, don't pay him, and ask him to protect them?? Then, the very next episode - when Dawn disappears - you ask Spike, again, to help you find her. Not only do you ask him - you have him patrol with you to do it. You don't have him go with Xander or Giles - which would make more sense. Powerful Spike with Xander. Giles with you. And...you don't think this is leading him on? Honey! Wake up!! Didn't you learn anything dating Angel and Riley???
If I were Spike, I'd think I had a chance too - based on those two scenes alone. Granted he goes about it in a relatively creepy manner...but still. Also, Buffy does this whole diatribe to Dawn about how unsafe it is for her to be visiting Spike in his lair - when just two episodes ago, Buffy takes Dawn to Spike, and tells Dawn that this is the safest place for her - safer than with anyone else, including her own home? Why Dawn doesn't throw that in Buffy's face I've no clue.
I'd say it was unintentional or a mistake in the writing, but first of all, the same writer wrote both episodes - David Fury. Also, it does work in regards to Spike's motivation. So I think it is deliberate. It just doesn't work regarding everyone else - it makes them look a bit, shall we say, dim?
Not quite sure what the writers were going for here. Is it that Buffy and her friends sort of got used to S4 Spike - who spontaneously helped them often without any discernible motivation obvious to them, then on a dime would turn on them, again without any discernible motivation obvious to them - that they sort of look at him as a bit like a pet panther? I'm guessing that's it. I don't think they - the gang - sees vampires as being "people" so much as dangerous and evil animals. This would make sense actually - since it is what Giles and the Watcher Council tells them - "that's not a person, that's a demon that has set up shop in the person you once knew, they talk like them, they act like them, they have their personality, but it is not them." When Jesse turns, Xander tries to reach his friend then realizes to his horror that his friend is gone or so he thinks. Jesse contradicts Xander, though, and says no, he just feels alive for the very first time, capable of anything, with no restrictions.
But Giles and Buffy reassure him and say Jesse no longer exists. It's what Buffy tells Ford in Lie to Me. And again to Angel when he returns from a hell dimension after his misdeeds as Angelus in S2. That wasn't you. Even though, Angel tries on more than one occassion to correct her. In Enemies - she begins to realize that maybe, just maybe she's wrong and that
Angelus and Angel are one and the same, Angelus is Angel without the conscience without anything holding him back, without a compass. But he is still Angel. It's an idea that unsettles her and she quickly shrugs it off. In Dopplegangland - Buffy tells Willow that VampWillow isn't anything like her - that's just the demon, Angel steps in and says actually, that's not the case...we...they turn to him, and he quickly backsteps. Never mind.
In season 4 - Riley and the Initiative treat the sub-terrestials like Spike as animals. Supernatural animals. Buffy begins to wonder. Harmony after all is more or less the same.
And she's not sure what to make of Spike. Yet Spike refers to himself as a dog in Pangs - that's right, Spike got neutered, he can't chase the other little puppies around no more.
Later in S5 - in Crush - Xander laughs when she tells him Spike is in love with her. Xander says it's not real - treating it like he might treat a dog's crush or a robot's. Buffy states more or less the same thing to Spike - "you don't have feelings. You can't love without a soul." In her head she's still going by what she has always been taught - vampires are pure demon, not half-human. The human is gone. Sort of like Illyria - except as we know with Illyria this isn't completely true - remanents of Fred exist inside her, affect the demon that she is. Ironically Spike and Wes' memories are acting as Illyria's soul, much as for a while his love for Buffy and the cip acted as Spike's soul. Anyhow, Xander sees it the same way - Spike is a monster. As does Joyce, Willow, and Giles - Spike is a monster. Tara - same deal - he's Quasimodo, bumpy in the forehead, and no moral compass - everything he does is selfishly motivated (actually I hate to tell you this but that is true of 99.4% of the human race last time I checked) - all for the love of a woman who could never love him back. What I found interesting in the exchange between Tara, Willow and Buffy - is Buffy is oblivious to what they are talking about. She didn't read the novel. Only saw the Disney film - where the cute Quasi helps Esmeralda and Esmeralda goes off with the prince, the gargolyles sing, and everyone lives happily ever after. That is not Hugo's story by the way. Quasimodo dies at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (I believe in a fire, can't remember) defying the evil priest master. It's not a happy ending. It's in some regards horrific and tragic. But Buffy is oblivious. She's absorbed in her own issues. Which is in character. Also to be fair, Buffy sort of puts blinders on regarding certain emotional issues that she can't deal with.
When Dru corrects Buffy and tells her, "yes we can love, quite well, just not very wisely" - I doubt Buffy hears her or she may dismiss it because it is Drusilla after all. Buffy sees Spike not as a man, but a monster, a pet monster. That she treats like a man. And that may well be confusing them both. Ever since Spike got the chip, heck before that, ever since Spike helped her defeat Dru and Angelus, their relationship has been confusing - they are supposed to want to kill one another, but they can't. So instead they dance - fighting or verbal banter, constant foreplay, with no clear execution. And as Spike states in Fool For Love, sooner or later, you get tired of the dance.
Buffy is to a degree treating Spike much the same way he treats Harmony. Which is ironic and karmic, in a way. And Spike is pursuing Buffy in some regards in much the same way Harmony pursued Spike. Harmony even states it: "I try and try and try. Do whatever it is you want. What does it take? I thought I could change you, make you love me, play your games, but you just treat me like your dog. You're the dog." It is in a nutshell what Spike does - first with Dru, then with Buffy, Pavlov's Dog - ringing Pavolov's bell, doing whatever it takes to get the cheese - even if it drives him looney in the process.
But Buffy doesn't realize that's what she is doing to him. She doesn't "see" him and that's all he wants. That's all he has ever wanted merely to be seen - it is why he goes crazy. She can't see him as he wishes to be seen. Not quite yet. Because if she does, then that puts into question who she is, what the Watcher Council is, what vampires are, and mostly what Angel/Angelus was. It turns everything she knows upside down and inside out. She's up to this point followed a certain rule or order...and it is at this point that order begins to slowly unravel.
Angelus - Buffy doesn't realize, did love her. It drove him insane. He hated her for it. Still burning from Darla's rejection no doubt. And he wanted to make her pay, turn her into a version of himself, another Drusilla, another of his harem, another mate. Just as Spike's love for her is driving him insane. But the two men are different, with different issues and different demons and different motivations. Angelus seeks out the mother for comfort or to prove something to the father constantly rejecting him, see - I can possess her! an eternal Oedipus Rex - cuckholding his Daddy, while Spike in contrast, seeks out the mother for approval and love, worships at her feet, changes himself for her - plays her knight errant - an eternal Lancelot, or Wickerman, burning for her sake, or killing her if he can't have her. Angelus destroys the world to show his father he is worthy, and kills her - to show his mastery. Spike attempts to bring her into his world, attacks her when he can't, then in shame burns himself to obtain her love and approval - seeks the spark that will burn him whole. They are opposite sides of the mythic coin. One represents the paternal order and the other the maternal. Or one - worships at the feet of a paternal god of the sky, while the other a maternal god of the earth. Note Angel in Amends drifts upwards on the First's urging to be burned by the sky, while Spike in Chosen is burned, in the bowels of the earth.
Spike is beneath and Angel is above. Spike lives in the crypt and the warehouse, and the basement, while Angel above ground in the penthouse, the Hyperion, and the Mansion.
Spike respects Joyce, and Angel respects Giles.
At any rate - I think the reason that Buffy et al don't understand Spike's affection and don't see how she's lead him on or they have, is they don't or rather can't see a vampire without a soul as something other than an animal. An evil animal. A pet dog, on a leash.
Not real. It's not until Season 6 and 7...that they begin to realize how wrong they are and that's when the First starts playing games. It was after all simpler when monsters were just that monsters.
In my rewatching of Buffy - up to The Body now, which I'm not quite ready to watch. Difficult episode. I tend to sob during it. It doesn't effect everyone apparently. But then there are people who cry during Becoming, when Tara dies in Seeing Red, and Spike's death in Chosen, and I never really have. So different strokes for different folks, I guess. At any rate the rewatch has made me aware of several bits - one, a few things are bit head-scratchy, in the, I'm not entirely sure this makes as much sense as the writer's may think category.
Buffy in Crush - wonders what it is she could have done to turn Spike on or lead him on? I didn't do anything she says. Except maybe beat him up a few times. For Spike that's probably first base. She's saying this to her mother by the way. Apparently Joyce and Buffy have had a temporary case of amensia and have completely forgotten that Buffy, just two episodes ago in Checkpoint, took Dawn and Joyce to Spike's and requested that he protect them with his life. Telling him that he was the only one strong enough that she trusted to protect her family. So, wait, you take the two people you care the most about in all the world to Spike, don't pay him, and ask him to protect them?? Then, the very next episode - when Dawn disappears - you ask Spike, again, to help you find her. Not only do you ask him - you have him patrol with you to do it. You don't have him go with Xander or Giles - which would make more sense. Powerful Spike with Xander. Giles with you. And...you don't think this is leading him on? Honey! Wake up!! Didn't you learn anything dating Angel and Riley???
If I were Spike, I'd think I had a chance too - based on those two scenes alone. Granted he goes about it in a relatively creepy manner...but still. Also, Buffy does this whole diatribe to Dawn about how unsafe it is for her to be visiting Spike in his lair - when just two episodes ago, Buffy takes Dawn to Spike, and tells Dawn that this is the safest place for her - safer than with anyone else, including her own home? Why Dawn doesn't throw that in Buffy's face I've no clue.
I'd say it was unintentional or a mistake in the writing, but first of all, the same writer wrote both episodes - David Fury. Also, it does work in regards to Spike's motivation. So I think it is deliberate. It just doesn't work regarding everyone else - it makes them look a bit, shall we say, dim?
Not quite sure what the writers were going for here. Is it that Buffy and her friends sort of got used to S4 Spike - who spontaneously helped them often without any discernible motivation obvious to them, then on a dime would turn on them, again without any discernible motivation obvious to them - that they sort of look at him as a bit like a pet panther? I'm guessing that's it. I don't think they - the gang - sees vampires as being "people" so much as dangerous and evil animals. This would make sense actually - since it is what Giles and the Watcher Council tells them - "that's not a person, that's a demon that has set up shop in the person you once knew, they talk like them, they act like them, they have their personality, but it is not them." When Jesse turns, Xander tries to reach his friend then realizes to his horror that his friend is gone or so he thinks. Jesse contradicts Xander, though, and says no, he just feels alive for the very first time, capable of anything, with no restrictions.
But Giles and Buffy reassure him and say Jesse no longer exists. It's what Buffy tells Ford in Lie to Me. And again to Angel when he returns from a hell dimension after his misdeeds as Angelus in S2. That wasn't you. Even though, Angel tries on more than one occassion to correct her. In Enemies - she begins to realize that maybe, just maybe she's wrong and that
Angelus and Angel are one and the same, Angelus is Angel without the conscience without anything holding him back, without a compass. But he is still Angel. It's an idea that unsettles her and she quickly shrugs it off. In Dopplegangland - Buffy tells Willow that VampWillow isn't anything like her - that's just the demon, Angel steps in and says actually, that's not the case...we...they turn to him, and he quickly backsteps. Never mind.
In season 4 - Riley and the Initiative treat the sub-terrestials like Spike as animals. Supernatural animals. Buffy begins to wonder. Harmony after all is more or less the same.
And she's not sure what to make of Spike. Yet Spike refers to himself as a dog in Pangs - that's right, Spike got neutered, he can't chase the other little puppies around no more.
Later in S5 - in Crush - Xander laughs when she tells him Spike is in love with her. Xander says it's not real - treating it like he might treat a dog's crush or a robot's. Buffy states more or less the same thing to Spike - "you don't have feelings. You can't love without a soul." In her head she's still going by what she has always been taught - vampires are pure demon, not half-human. The human is gone. Sort of like Illyria - except as we know with Illyria this isn't completely true - remanents of Fred exist inside her, affect the demon that she is. Ironically Spike and Wes' memories are acting as Illyria's soul, much as for a while his love for Buffy and the cip acted as Spike's soul. Anyhow, Xander sees it the same way - Spike is a monster. As does Joyce, Willow, and Giles - Spike is a monster. Tara - same deal - he's Quasimodo, bumpy in the forehead, and no moral compass - everything he does is selfishly motivated (actually I hate to tell you this but that is true of 99.4% of the human race last time I checked) - all for the love of a woman who could never love him back. What I found interesting in the exchange between Tara, Willow and Buffy - is Buffy is oblivious to what they are talking about. She didn't read the novel. Only saw the Disney film - where the cute Quasi helps Esmeralda and Esmeralda goes off with the prince, the gargolyles sing, and everyone lives happily ever after. That is not Hugo's story by the way. Quasimodo dies at the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (I believe in a fire, can't remember) defying the evil priest master. It's not a happy ending. It's in some regards horrific and tragic. But Buffy is oblivious. She's absorbed in her own issues. Which is in character. Also to be fair, Buffy sort of puts blinders on regarding certain emotional issues that she can't deal with.
When Dru corrects Buffy and tells her, "yes we can love, quite well, just not very wisely" - I doubt Buffy hears her or she may dismiss it because it is Drusilla after all. Buffy sees Spike not as a man, but a monster, a pet monster. That she treats like a man. And that may well be confusing them both. Ever since Spike got the chip, heck before that, ever since Spike helped her defeat Dru and Angelus, their relationship has been confusing - they are supposed to want to kill one another, but they can't. So instead they dance - fighting or verbal banter, constant foreplay, with no clear execution. And as Spike states in Fool For Love, sooner or later, you get tired of the dance.
Buffy is to a degree treating Spike much the same way he treats Harmony. Which is ironic and karmic, in a way. And Spike is pursuing Buffy in some regards in much the same way Harmony pursued Spike. Harmony even states it: "I try and try and try. Do whatever it is you want. What does it take? I thought I could change you, make you love me, play your games, but you just treat me like your dog. You're the dog." It is in a nutshell what Spike does - first with Dru, then with Buffy, Pavlov's Dog - ringing Pavolov's bell, doing whatever it takes to get the cheese - even if it drives him looney in the process.
But Buffy doesn't realize that's what she is doing to him. She doesn't "see" him and that's all he wants. That's all he has ever wanted merely to be seen - it is why he goes crazy. She can't see him as he wishes to be seen. Not quite yet. Because if she does, then that puts into question who she is, what the Watcher Council is, what vampires are, and mostly what Angel/Angelus was. It turns everything she knows upside down and inside out. She's up to this point followed a certain rule or order...and it is at this point that order begins to slowly unravel.
Angelus - Buffy doesn't realize, did love her. It drove him insane. He hated her for it. Still burning from Darla's rejection no doubt. And he wanted to make her pay, turn her into a version of himself, another Drusilla, another of his harem, another mate. Just as Spike's love for her is driving him insane. But the two men are different, with different issues and different demons and different motivations. Angelus seeks out the mother for comfort or to prove something to the father constantly rejecting him, see - I can possess her! an eternal Oedipus Rex - cuckholding his Daddy, while Spike in contrast, seeks out the mother for approval and love, worships at her feet, changes himself for her - plays her knight errant - an eternal Lancelot, or Wickerman, burning for her sake, or killing her if he can't have her. Angelus destroys the world to show his father he is worthy, and kills her - to show his mastery. Spike attempts to bring her into his world, attacks her when he can't, then in shame burns himself to obtain her love and approval - seeks the spark that will burn him whole. They are opposite sides of the mythic coin. One represents the paternal order and the other the maternal. Or one - worships at the feet of a paternal god of the sky, while the other a maternal god of the earth. Note Angel in Amends drifts upwards on the First's urging to be burned by the sky, while Spike in Chosen is burned, in the bowels of the earth.
Spike is beneath and Angel is above. Spike lives in the crypt and the warehouse, and the basement, while Angel above ground in the penthouse, the Hyperion, and the Mansion.
Spike respects Joyce, and Angel respects Giles.
At any rate - I think the reason that Buffy et al don't understand Spike's affection and don't see how she's lead him on or they have, is they don't or rather can't see a vampire without a soul as something other than an animal. An evil animal. A pet dog, on a leash.
Not real. It's not until Season 6 and 7...that they begin to realize how wrong they are and that's when the First starts playing games. It was after all simpler when monsters were just that monsters.
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Date: 2009-07-09 02:40 am (UTC)Well, I don't really disagree with you. You are correct Xander, Giles, and the others do see vampires without souls as things. Demons. Anya - they aren't quite sure about. And that's when things get tricky for Xander in S7.
But - here, for this analysis (even though it may not quite seem like it) I'm really just dealing with Buffy S5 at the moment, not season 6 - and at this point, they aren't really saying "thing" that much. There's more references to animals. In Crush - they use the dog reference several times. And Riley, in S4, refers to vampires as animals.
Personally? I prefer the "thing" reference better - it's clearer and makes more sense - since animals are living creatures. It also like you state reflects back to the earlier seasons.
Otherwise I agree with you. I think the writers did intentionally exploit that gap between what the characters thought of Spike and what they were showing us. People forget that Xander does not know what we know about Spike. Xander's experience is - Spike tried to kill him at least three times, tossing him aside like candy. When Xander trusted Spike, Spike reminded him he was evil - This Year's Girl, Yoko Factor, CRUSH (steals money from him). I don't think Xander knows how to deal with Spike. Also, Xander can't forget Jesse - who turned into a vampire, or vampWillow...
This catches up with Xander in Selfless - where he realizes it's not so simple. Selfless would have a lot less impact regarding Xander - if he didn't react the way he does to Spike. But it makes sense he does act this way.
I think the characters - Xander, Willow, Giles and Buffy were badly burned by Angelus, Jesse, and to a degree Spike's erratic behavior in Season 4...it's hard for them to see vampires without souls as anything but things. Also, when you are spending most of your time slaying them - it's a bit hard to do it as well. As Buffy states in Conversations with Dead People - she worries about her calling. Is it just? Spike's actions have thrown her for a loop.