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[personal profile] shadowkat
Before I do the meta below, a couple of caveats/warnings:

1.Triggers: if you are a fan of the show or really dislike portions of the show, Buffy, it probably pushed your buttons in some major way. I've come to the realization lately that the movies, books, tv shows that people get obsessed with or emotionally invested in,
often trigger a strong emotional response and it isn't always something that they are conscious of or aware of. They can't always explain why they feel the way they do. Also in some cases that response is contradictory to another person's response to the same show. They are triggered by it, but the trigger is..different for them. And neither understands the other's trigger, or rather they may understand it on an intellectual level but not on an emotional visceral one.

If you are triggered in a negative way by the Buffy-Spike relationship or have a negative reaction to Spike in any way, you may want to skip this post. The same goes for the tv show or the sixth season. As stated in previous metas - life is too short to get riled up over a live journal post about a tv show.

I will refer to and discuss topics such as rape and sexual violence in the post below - if these upset you, you may wish to skip this post.

2. In my rewatch of the sixth season, I understood why a lot of fans of the series really don't like this season. It is a painful season to watch. The episodes from Hell's Bells to Seeing Red were horrific and heart-renching in places. But, if you keep in mind that the series is horror, they are brilliant. Each deals with situations that scare us in real life.
My difficulty with these episodes, is they are sloppy and/or too ambitious in direction and writing. At times, one feels like one is watching two different tv shows.

3. This journal is entitled Spontanous Musings. So the entry below is stream of consciousness in nature. The dialogue is how I remember it. There is bound to be typos and errors.



The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Dawn to Buffy in Once More With Feeling.

When Buffy is resurrected in S6, she spends the majority of the season attempting to connect to life, she feels detached from it - she has to a degree become pure slayer, normal life eludes her. But she hates the slayer part of herself. Her power. She wants to be the normal girl with the normal life. Yet normal life isn't what she thought it was going to be. Nor is being the slayer for that matter.

Losing someone you love, while horrible, does not mean you can shut out everyone and everything else that cares about you and needs you as if they don't matter. - Giles states this to Willow in Grave after Willow has lost Tara and decided to destroy everything in her path. She's told Giles that nothing can hurt her anymore, nothing matters. The only thing that mattered was Tara.

This statement also to a degree applies to Buffy - who after she lost her mother, shut down.
All that mattered was saving her sister and saving the world. As she states to Giles at one point in S5, it just keeps coming. First Angel, then Riley, then Mom, and now Dawn? I can't do it any more. If this is life, I don't want to be in it.

So she dies to save the world and her friends bring her back. And the world she comes back to is nothing like the one she left - it has bills to pay, dead-end jobs, pathetic villians, a formerly evil vampire who is madly in love with her, a sister with serious abandonment issues, and a best-friend addicted to power.

inconsistencies and contradictions have appeared, you are no longer slaying your demons like you did in high school, no hell-gods as big bads, now they are just three pathetic boys that you went to high school with, these are your villians.

Buffy looks at her own power and wonders if it is wrong. You came back wrong - Spike tells her. Yet Tara does her research on the spell, and says no, this is you. It can't be, Buffy protests. She is drawn to the dark but fears it as well. Fears the killer that lurks inside, fears her own demon.

Spike as stated in previous metas is a man at war with himself. In this way he is a dark reflection of Buffy herself. Buffy is fighting with her darker impulses this season, Spike in contrast is fighting with the light.

Spike to Clem in Seeing Red: "The chip won't let me be a monster, and I can't be a man, I'm nothing."

As is stated in the overview of season 6, Spike is a character in conflict with himself - he can't be bad, he can't be good, so he is being pulled into ambiguous gray. He tries to pull Buffy into that area with him.

We see the war playing out inside him in various episodes. Now that Buffy has broken up with him and stepped out into the light so to speak, Spike is wrestling with a desire to drag her back to him, kicking and screaming if need be. She has the power. She left. She broke it off.
And he's reeling.

Spike to Xander in Normal Again: "We're just figments of her imagination eh? Well that would explain alot, putting this chip in my head, making me soft, making me fall in love with her, so I can become Buffy's sodding sex slave."

In Spike's head the sex gave him power. As long as she wanted him in that way - she came to him. Was with him. He had her. Yet he doesn't really have her. And he knows that. He even states it - "soddin sex slave".

In Hell's Bells - Spike is invited to Xander and Anya's wedding. He brings along a date. A punk rocker, complete with body piercings. Dawn sees them together, and Spike makes a point of kissing the girl in front of Dawn. "Did you see the date Spike brought, he had his tongue down her throat," Dawn tells her sister, who winces. When Buffy finally approaches him in a scene that is deftly juxatposed with the statement "sometimes two people bring nothing to each other but pain" - she tells him that she saw his date and yes, she figured out that it was a rather good attempt at making her jealous. While she admits that it did work to a degree, it does hurt her to see him with someone else, she is jealous, it still doesn't change anything. Spike reactes to this in an interesting way, similar to his song in Once More With Feeling - where he states - I'm better off if she burns, I better help her out or first I'll save her, then I'll kill her.

The monster inside him and the man are at war here.

Spike:Did it hurt?
Buffy: yes.
Spike: I'm sorry...no, I mean, good.
Buffy: it's nothing that I don't deserve.
Spike: no, no, that's not true - you don't deserve it..
Buffy: it doesn't change anything
Spike: Look I'll go...
Buffy: No, no, you should stay, I'll be fine.
Spike: It's good to see you happy. Even if it's just for them. I don't see it very often. You glow.
Buffy:It's the dress I think it is radioactive.
Spike: We'll just go.
Buffy: You taking her back to your place?
Spike: Well that was the plan...evil
Buffy: of course
Spike: But I won't...

The back and forth demonstrates the conflict going on inside him and why she is struggling with her own feelings for him - because she is aware of that conflict. It is juxtaposed with the battle going inside Xander at the same time - Xander's fear of becoming the monster that his father is with his mother. Xander does not break off the wedding to Anya because of Anya, but because of Xander - he's not afraid of what Anya may become, but what he will. When he tells her that it wasn't her that he was hating, he's looking at his father belittling and critiquing his mother, who is on the ground, pounded there by his father's drunken rants. Xander sees all the things he's said to Anya as a reflection of what his father has said over the years.

In the next episode, Normal Again, Buffy passes Spike in the grave yard. He asks her if she's looking for him, when she says she really isn't - he snarks, well on with you then. It comes across as rude, but the truth is she's struggling with her own demons. In this instance a hallucingenic that makes her believe she's in a mental institution and that being a slayer is a delusion. When he asks about the wedding, she stops and discusses it with him until her friends show up and Buffy covers.

From Spike's pov, he'd have Buffy - if she told her friends about them. All he has to do is manage somehow to trick her into telling Xander and Willow and Dawn. He doesn't know she's told Tara.

Spike to Buffy in Normal Again: "I've got it figured out - you aren't addicted to dark like I thought, you're addicted to the misery - if you told your friends about us, they'd either forgive you and accept you into the light or they'd reject you and you could enter the dark with me. You tell your friends or I will. Let yourself live already."

But his ploy doesn't really work. Her friends don't reject her when they find out. And he doesn't get her. He thinks it will in Entropy. When he threatens her with it again, and she states she isn't going to tell him, but considering she almost killed them and they forgave her for that - she figures it's not going to be that big a deal. Frustrated, he states, then why won't you sleep with me again - if you aren't so worried about your friends finding out.
Buffy responds - to his annoyance - because I don't love you. It's a statement she's repeated continuously this season, and he reacts to in various ways - "you will" or "you do and are just denying it."

Entropy is an interesting and at times painful episode. It delves into the gray areas of relationships between people. How we have a tendency to demonize people. Xander in Entropy demonizes Spike - who is a demon. He imposes his point of view about Spike, his prejudices, justifiable perhaps, onto others. It's a character flaw that he may well have inherited from his father, and was nutured by Giles and his own experiences with vampires. Xander sees vampires as irredeemably evil - regardless of how many good deeds they have done. Particularly anything without a soul.

Xander's view in Entropy is ironic. Because unbeknowest to Xander, Anya is a demon again. She's become a vengeance demon with mystical powers and abilities. She can teleport and curse people. And throughout Entropy is trying to hurt Xander. Ironically, she does find the best possible way to hurt him, but it is unintentional. Just as Spike, ironically, inflicts harm but does so unintentionally.

While Anya is attempting to deal with the fallout of Hells Bells, by trying to get one of Xander's friends to curse him - because she can't or not feel anything for Xander, Spike is attempting to deal with the breakup in As You Were by attempting to get Buffy to either tell her friends (because he sees them as the main obstacle) or to not feel anything. Neither can find relief. And unwittingly, Buffy and Xander hurt both Anya and Spike with their words.
Xander hurts Anya when he tells her that yes he loves her, but he knew all along that they shouldn't get married. His mistake was not in telling her sooner. Can they get back together?
Buffy in contrast tells Spike - I know your feelings for me are "real" for "you". But you have to move on. (It is a condescending statement - which elicits fury from Spike.)

What happens next...is Spike goes to Anya's magic shop for a spell, something to reduce the pain. Alocohol isn't helping. Yet this is all Anya has - Gile's single malt scotch. So they get drunk together. Confide in each other, much as they did once upon a time in another episode, two seasons ago. Yet, here their feelings are different. And they don't want to inflict pain any more than they really wanted to then, so much as find solace.

Anya to Xander in Two to Go: "Sleeping with Spike wasn't about vengeance, Xander. That was about solace."

Spike to Buffy in Seeing Red: "I didn't want a spell to fix you, I wanted something for me, I wanted to find something to stop these feelings, the pain."

And neither knew that Buffy or Xander or anyone else could see them. They didn't know about the cameras. Their actions however do bring a few things to the forefront - Xander finds out about Buffy and Spike, as does Dawn and to a degree Willow. If Spike hadn't told them, Buffy's reaction to him sleeping with Anya did, and her immediate response to Xander's attempt to kill him.

In Entropy - we see the war inside Buffy come to the fore again. She's not sure what to make of Spike. Never really has been sure.

As she tells Xander in response to his blistering and somewhat hypocritical and patronizing critique of her behavior: "You let him fight beside you all summer. You let him babysit and help with Dawn. Take care of Dawn."

Xander: "But I never forgot what he was. Do you think he'd be all cuddly and nice without that chip in his head. It's a leash nothing more."

Buffy isn't sure. Because she knows he can hurt her now. Something I'm not sure she's explained to Xander yet. Xander makes the mistake many people do, of imposing his frame of reference on to someone else, without all the information. Making the assumption that he knows everything. That there are boundaries and an end zone and road signs. In Restless - in Xander's dream - we see him stating pretty much that to Anya, you can't drive by gesturing, you can't set your own rules, be your own authority figure - there are rules here. Guidelines.
He's an individual who likes things to be concrete, not abstract. Clear. Vampires =evil. Soulless =evil. Buffy like Xander is struggling with this concept as well. They'd been taught it was this way...but now the villian is three kids they went to school with. Not a vampire.
Not a demon. Just three guys, human, like themselves.

Spike meanwhile is struggling with his own demon. Drinking. Alone. When Dawn visits and tells him that he hurt her sister. If that was his intent, he did a good job of it. It wasn't, as he tries to explain to her - that Anya and him were just a bit of comfort, not serious.
When she states that he did hurt Buffy and asks if he really loves Buffy...he states, "like big sis has been all that nice lately herself." There's a war going on here.

Buffy is having a bad night or bad day. That morning she got her jacket sliced open by the Trio's gadgetry, she's had a bit of a fight with Xander over Spike, and while slaying a random vampire in the graveyard, she lands on a tombstone, splitting it in two and injuring her back. The fight with the vamp is juxtaposed with her fight with Spike in her bathroom.

Before I discuss the scene between Spike and Buffy in the bathroom, I will admit that I find portions of this scene impossible to watch. There's a few scenes in both Angel and Buffy series that I can't watch. Actually not just these series. I find Criminal Minds unwatchable for similar reasons - in its first season it had a man rape a woman after she'd been immobilized by spider bites. I am not triggered by sexual violence, but I do find rape scenes difficult to watch.

That said, it is not a rape. He does not complete the act and it is made more than clear that he could have if he wanted to. If his conscious intent had been to hurt her or truly rape her, he could have done so. No one was there. They were in a confined space. She had no weapons. All he had to do was go into vampire mode. If Spike wanted to kill or hurt Buffy - he could have.

So what happened and more to the point why?

Vampire metaphor

Spike from the get-go has been a sexually charged character. But then so are vampires in general. The vampire throughout our mythology is seen as a metaphor for forbidden sexual desire and sexual violence. He is either the wicked seducer or the rapist, who lunges at you from the darkness of your fears. In School Hard, where he is first introduced - Spike is a bit of a sexual predator, he prowls the Bronze for Buffy and leers as she dances. And in his view, his power has always been sexual. And through metaphor - the writers show Spike and other vampires attempting rape people. Each time he tries to bite Buffy in the past, she is lying on the ground in much the same position she is lying in the bathroom in Seeing Red. Note in Out of My Mind - he literally jumps on top of her. And in Something Blue she tells him that defanged - he is impotent, or as he himself states in Pangs - I've been defanged, I can no longer run with the other puppies, I'm neutered. And Buffy, repeats the metaphor in Life Serial - "the only person I can stand to be with is a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker." It's no accident that Spike and Buffy's sexual relationship does not really take off until Spike and Buffy discover that Spike's chip doesn't work on her any more. But instead of drinking from her neck or biting her, or instead of staking him, they fuck. And he even states it - comparing the vampire lung to the fuck in Wrecked - "I always knew the only thing better than killing a slayer would be..."

All the writers did was drop the metaphor, that was all. The scene would have looked more or less the same if he had been in vamp face and lunging at her. This is confusing if you read the show too literally. But the writer is not literal, he's a bit of a poet, and writes with metaphors.

Was it a human crime or a demon crime? Well it depends on how you define demon. Are you defining it literally - as in demons are actual external beings separate from humans or are you looking at it metaphorically, as in demons or monsters are internal not external, and live within all of us. I think the writers are doing both here. In earlier seasons they kept the metaphor - Angelus kills Jenny with his demon face, but his crime is a human one. He does not drink from her neck. He merely snaps it. Then he sets her up as a gift for Giles to torment Giles. The demon face is showing that the monster does it. The monster part of our own nature. Our own dark impulse. And as Angelus tells Faith in Orpheus, that monster doesn't just go away with a wave of a magic wand. Sure the soul controls it in a vampire, it's not front and center, but I'm always in Angel. I'm always there.

It's easier for us as viewers to see the monster face do the crime. If we can demonize the perpetuator, we can make sense of the act. But the theme of the season is that we can't demonize people. Actions don't make someone good or evil by themselves. Intent factors in.
As do the actions of the person after they've done it. How they reacte to their own actions.

Spike comes into Buffy's bathroom - which never made much sense to me. Why he went up there and didn't track her down in the graveyard earlier...seemed a bit convienent to the writer and contrived. It would have worked better, I think, if they'd established that he'd done it before or that she'd been having sex with him in the bathroom or in her bedroom in secret. But the fact that to my knowledge he's never entered that bathroom on screen - it sort of jars you out of the story. I know why the writer picked it from a metaphorical perspective - the bathroom is a person's sancturary, it is where you are the most vulnerable. Buffy is at her most vulnerable in her bathroom. She's naked with just a robe on. No weapons. No makeup. The space is confined. She can't easily fight or get away. It's a small space. Metaphorically - Spike entering Buffy's bathroom to discuss their breakup is perfect, literally - it doesn't make a lot of sense. And that's the thing about this scene - if you read it too literally, it doesn't work, if you read it too metaphorically, it doesn't either. Complicated scene and a difficult one to watch partly for those reasons.

When he enters, he shuts the door. She has just pulled back the curtain. And they discuss their relationship. The discussion depicts the war going on inside both characters and reflects on the discussions Buffy has had with both Dawn and Xander regarding Spike in previous episodes, as well as the discussions Spike has had with Dawn and Anya. With Anya, Spike explained how raw Buffy was, how amazing, yet she doesn't want him because he is soulless and wonders if she ever would. The poet and bad vamp are at war. With Dawn, he is surprised that Buffy cares, he'd assumed maybe she didn't. Maybe he has a chance after all.
At any rate, at this point - he feels he has nothing to lose. Numb with booze, he goes to her place - to find out where he stands and maybe take a bit of his power back. It's not entirely clear what his intentions are at this point. I'm not sure he knows.

He tries to talk, she keeps telling him to get out. He finally states - "this isn't just about you. I have something to say. I'm sorry."

Then they discuss his sleeping with Anya, and he explains much as Anya does later with Xander - that it was about solace. And he asks, finally the question that has been bugging him since Dawn visited - "why didn't you let Xander kill me?"

Buffy: You know why.
Spike: Because you have feelings for me.
Buffy: I admit that I have feelings for you, but it is not love. It could never be love. I could never trust you enough for it to be love.

What is stated next about love, is in a way a remark on both the Angel/Buffy relationship and the Buffy/Spike - it is the writer explaining why these relationships do not work but are powerful to watch. It is a statement that oddly enough has been stated before but by Spike and in a different way.

Spike: "Love isn't about brains, people. It's about blood. Blood rushing through you, screaming to be free. You're not friends, you'll never be friends, you'll shag until it makes you quiver, you'll fight, but you won't be friends. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it." - Lover's Walk (Spike to Angel and Buffy)

Spike to Buffy: Trust is for old marrieds, pet. Love is wild, passionate, chaotic - it burns."
Buffy: Until nothing is left. That type of love can't last.

And that is when he attacks her. It is at that moment, that Spike makes the desperate attempt to change her mind.

Spike: You have feelings for me. Why do you deny it? I'll make you feel it. When I was inside you you felt it.

The comment is an echo of what he says at the beginning of Dead Things and in Wrecked.

Spike: "You like what I do to you?" She nods. (Dead Things)

Buffy: It's not love
Spike: Not yet, but you're going to start craving me, the way I crave blood...I got my rocks back. (Wrecked)

Here - the demon inside him, the blood inside him, is screaming for release, he decides he can convince her by forcing her. It worked before - right? On the balcony in the bronze, in the building that fell around them. He can't quite see the difference. He also, wants desperately to hurt her.

Buffy: You went to get a spell to fix me?
Spike: No, for me, I needed something for me - to make these feelings go away. To stop the pain.

He wants the power back. She has it. He wants it. As Willow states to Warren, the human, not a demon, who rapes a girl, kill her, and shoots two others, using a gun - you got off on the power that you had over another, over a woman. They dropped the metaphor with Warren, much as they do here with Spike.

When Spike attacks her, it is brutal, he can't see her, he can't hear her, and his face contorts with perversion, it is as the writers state in their overview a twisted perversion of his own sexual desires and own desire power. Power, sex, violence, death have always been inter-twined in Spike's mind. He can't really separate them. Metaphorically the scene reminds me a bit of others in the series, from Xander's attempt to rape Buffy, while the Hyena inhabited him, to the first slayer in Restless who jumps on her and attempts to stab her, in much the same position. In all of these scenes Buffy stops it. Some more easier than others.
The dark impulse - the acquisition of power by grabbing it from another.

Buffy for her part is screaming and crying and torn. He has by this action proven Xander right, as well as all her own doubts curdling inside. It is as painful a betrayal as Angel's in Innocence and later in other episodes. And she pushes him off.

But, here is where the story begins to get interesting. Spike is horrified by what he's done. When he realizes it, he has a look of complete horror and remorse on his face. When he states he didn't intend to, that he never would have done that - she throws it back, that he would have if she had not stopped him. And she is right, he would have. He had lost control. He did want to hurt her. He did want to assert his power over her. And yes, he did or rather part of him, did get off on it. And Buffy states: "ask me again, why I don't love you? why I can't trust you?"

Spike is so upset by this he leaves the house without his trademark jacket. To my knowledge Spike has never gone anywhere without it. He even comes back for it in Pangs, when he gets away from Giles. But here, he leaves it behind. Racing back home, where he has what amounts to a battle with his own internal demons.

Spike: What did I do? Why did I do it...Why didn't I do it? Oh what has she done to me?"

He replays the scene in his head like a broken record, terrified by it. Flinching and wincing as it plays. Yet unable to dislodge it. It runs counter to what he told her in Entropy - "I don't hurt you." As proof that Buffy is right, that Xander is right...that he will and does.

Spike's reaction to his actions in Seeing Red are contrasted with Warren's, just as Xander's actions regarding Anya are contrasted with Warren's. Warren finds mystical balls that give him strength, courage to fight people who he is afraid of. He's always been afraid of Buffy.
He feels powerless. He doesn't want to steal money as much as he wants to force women to love him, beat up guys who teased him, and assert his power. While Spike is humilated and devastated by his actions. Warren gets off on his. The intriguing thing about the juxtaposition is it is in direct contrast to what Xander tells Buffy in Entropy. Warren is human. There is no demon. He is not mystical. He has a soul. The rules as they know them do not apply to Warren.

Buffy: Being a slayer does not give you a license to kill. We don't kill humans.
Xander: But Warren is evil. What he's done..
Buffy: Warren is human not mystical. There are human laws to handle him.

Same with Tara's death, unlike Buffy, Willow can't bring her back - it was her time, it was within the natural order of things.

Spike's fight inside himself is between the man, who believes he is good, and the demon who wants to be bad. Is he a monster or a man. Is it the chip? Everyone has told him it is. But if you listen to him closely from Crush to Seeing Red - he has repeatedly stated that it is not the chip. He can kill Buffy now. But he doesn't want to. Even when he forgets the chip, forgets who he is, he doesn't want to. He knows he is supposed to want to kill Buffy, to rape her, to show power over her - that's what he is supposed to be. But it is not what he wants to be. He doesn't really want to be a monster anymore, he doesn't really see himself as one.
He fights monsters.

Spike in Intervention: I'm not a monster.
Xander: yes you are, vampires are monsters, they make monster movies about them.

Spike in the Gift: I know you can never love me, I know I am a monster, but you treat me like a man...and that's..

Spike in Once More with Feeling: I died a hundred years ago, but you can make me feel like it isn't so...

But the only way to be a man is to have a soul.. Without one, Buffy can't trust him. So he journeys to Africa to find it. To find the thing he's been told for the last year and a half that he needs to be a man for Buffy. He has to fight the monster. The dark impulse that caused him to attack her.

His search for a soul is in a way a metaphor for his horror at what he's done. His remorse.
No one is more upset about the attempted rape than Spike is. As he states in Beneath You - I understand why you'd be skittish, I have no words either, sorry doesn't work, can't say forgive me, all I can say is I have changed. He wants to be forgiven, but he's not sure it is forgiveable. He's not sure he should be forgiven.

Giles to Buffy in I Only Have Eyes For You: You don't forgive people because they deserve it Buffy, you do it because they need it and so do you.

Buffy herself has mixed feelings about Spike's sexual assault. She's ashamed. Betrayed. Confused. His reaction to it all surprised her. His leaving surprises her more. And the fact that he gets a soul to atone for it, to ensure it doesn't happen again - only to realize that a soul isn't a guarantee for anything - rocks her world.

These themes are juxtaposed with Willow - who goes on a murderous rampage after Warren takes Tara away. Willow who can't see anything beyond her own rage. Her own impotence. She wants power, fills herself with power. Rips and rapes power from Rack, who had taken some from her, and from Giles, who deliberately sets her up to do it. Yet it doesn't give her power over anything meaningful - she can't save Tara. She can't turn back time. All she can do is destroy the world and herself in it. It's not until Xander reaches out and says he loves her no matter what that she comes back to herself and lets go of the rage. The vengeance as Anya realizes changes nothing. Turning the man into the worm, only hurts her. Becoming vengeance personified doesn't stop the pain. Giving into the monster, doesn't resolve it.

Buffy starts to see that it isn't simple. She can't protect her sister from the world. And she can't protect her by teaching her sister the simple rules and guidelines she was taught.
She can show her sister the world, and by doing so, learn to live with her own inner demons, find a way to combat them...somehow.

The last season, the final season of the series is in a way a continuation of season 6, in it the characters resolve the battle with their inner demons. Spike's battle with his, the part of him that attacked Buffy, as well as the part that wants to reject that demonic power whole.
Willow likewise, who wants to reject the magic whole. They both want to cast out the part that did those actions. The power that drove them there. But that doesn't work, it doesn't resolve the problem. Any more than giving into the power did.

Buffy sees that she is both slayer and normal girl. She slays her demons and those of her friends, that is her power. And the knowledge and desire to do so comes from being the normal girl. It's not about right, it's not about wrong...it's not that simple, it is however about power. How we use it, whether we let it use us. Our actions have consequences and sometimes the consequences and how we handle them is as important if not more so than the act itself.

Okay off to get something to eat and go to the farmer's market.

Date: 2009-08-23 06:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] embers-log.livejournal.com
this is great... and I need to reread and think about the points you are making (I agree w/you, but I haven't really thought about all these things)...
and I'm distracted at the moment because I'm watching Joss' Humanist talk at Harvard, which is here in it's entirety:
http://forum.wgbh.org/lecture/joss-whedon-cultural-humanist
(you can just listen if the watching on computer is headache producing)

It is full of insights about Joss' work on Buffy (and everything else)

Date: 2009-08-23 07:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shadowkat67.livejournal.com
Thanks for the link. Listening to it now.

My first impression is the same one I have whenever a writer of fiction informs me that they don't believe in god, which is how can a fictional writer who creates a universe of creatures and characters not believe in a god? You are after all god to your characters, what makes you think there isn't a force out there doing the same? Hee.

Date: 2009-08-23 07:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shadowkat67.livejournal.com
Okay, listened some more - his difficulty and philosophy is sort of the same as mine, which is a sort of existentialist view, and sort of not.
[And yes, Close Encounters of The Third Kind is one of those films that I can watch over and over again.]

Date: 2009-08-23 07:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shadowkat67.livejournal.com
It's interesting, I agree and disagree with Whedon. He doesn't seem to realize that it is possible to believe in God but not to believe in a god who tells you what to do, or a sky-bully (because hello, free will.)

It's an old philosophical debate between free will - determinism that often gets confused with belief in God or not belief in God.

That said, what he is saying if you think about it - does to a degree explain what was happening in his tv shows - specifically Angel - who believes in the sky-bully, and Buffy - who does not believe in the sky-bully. And Spike who isn't sure, but says fuck-you to the sky-bully half the time.

Humanist - is an extreme view, like secularism, they ignore the agnostics or those like myself who do believe in God, but not in the religious doctrination. Who believe in "free-thinking" as part and parcel of believing in God.

He seems to think believing in God or faith in God is contrary to belief and faith in humanity, but the two are not necessarily exclusive. It's NOT an either/or. That's the biggest problem I think with how we think - we often think it is an either/or, that you are either this or that. When it is not. He seems to get that in his stories - which contradict in some respects his own statements in the speech - but then here's the thing about writing stories, the writer tries to play god - tries to control the characters, but we lose control. The characters move the story, when we attempt to move it - we lose the story, lose the thread. An example is the character of Spike - where they created a character that they plotted to kill, that was a disposable villian, but Spike went another direction. They planned the wacky neighbor, comic relief, but Spike chose to fall in love with Buffy.

As a writer, I know the pattern takes over, free will of the variables. It's like when you are creating art - something else happens, you have control, but not. So since I see God differently from the deeply religious and the non-believers like Whedon, as similar to someone who well writes a book. Once it is written - it is out of your control. It changes and rearranges itself.

The problem with religion and religious rituals is it imposes the will of the group upon the individual, it removes the free will.
Not always though. Some religious rituals bring people together, make them whole. Whedon seems to get that.

Sigh. I'm rambling, but I guess what I'm getting at is why I can't join the cultural humanists - even though I do agree with their view that you can be a moral being and not believe in an authority. I am a moral being and don't believe in a higher authority - the God I believe in gave me free will.

Oh - I love this quote - "the worst thing about vampires is they don't die. They buck the system. They don't take their place in the cycle. Death as a part of life, is the thing we seem to be running the most from our culture, we seem to be the most afraid of."



Date: 2009-08-23 08:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shadowkat67.livejournal.com
He says something interesting that hits my post above...which is that actions matter, but they do not define the person. Actions aren't people. Which I think comes through clearly in the stories.

Saying all this..I think at some point in good stories and art, the writer disappears. The intent, authorial or otherwise, is gone. The writer is telling the story - not really doing anything else. How we interpret the story, how we see it is up to us, and we will all see it differently. My brother said it once -during one of his art shows in undergrad - his final - he said art was about interaction. The viewer brings themselves to the party, what they see is part of the art, it evolves as it is passed amongst us.

The writer of fiction is really not moralizing. He isn't writing a speech. It's not didaticism. It is a story...the fiction writer unlike the speechwriter is trying to figure it out. When it does become speechfying, we lose the story.
I think a lot of viewers forget that - they look at fiction as morality play, when sometimes it is not. It is a story trying to figure out the larger human condition, a what-if scenario.

Date: 2009-08-25 12:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] louise39.livejournal.com
I think at some point in good stories and art, the writer disappears. The intent, authorial or otherwise, is gone. The writer is telling the story - not really doing anything else. How we interpret the story, how we see it is up to us, and we will all see it differently.

Yes! I agree wholeheartedly. Reading or watching is interacting with the writer or artist and bringing my own stuff.

Speaking of which, I so enjoy reading your thoughts and I would like to friend you. OK?

Date: 2009-08-25 04:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shadowkat67.livejournal.com
Speaking of which, I so enjoy reading your thoughts and I would like to friend you. OK?

thank you. And yes, go ahead.

Date: 2009-08-24 11:38 am (UTC)
shapinglight: (Default)
From: [personal profile] shapinglight
This is awesome meta yet again.

Date: 2009-08-29 06:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com
Oh. Word.

(Sorry, I never have anything of interest to add)

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