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Buffy’s Dance with the Vamps: Why Spike’s Soul Matters
In response to some comments on my previous post, here's a four-page essay on the role Spike's soul plays in Buffy's story.
In the comments to my last post on multiple motivations, there was a lot of discussion about whether Spike’s soul matters, and if so how. The conversations are mostly about how Spike’s soul fits in with his own journey, but the dilemma comes with trying to figure out what the “soul” means in the ‘verse as a whole. I’ve tried for a long time to come up with one theory of the soul, but I can’t find one that does justice to both Angel’s story and to Spike’s. This is not to say that the individual stories aren’t compelling and insightful. But the “soul” seemed to shift around to fit the demands of the story at the moment. Sidebar: and let’s just get one thing off the table for good: whatever it is that “soul” means in the ‘verse, it has nothing to do with what a Christian would call a soul. But that’s a topic for another day.
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candleanfeather observes in a comment that there are often ambiguities and tensions that crop up when we try to reconcile the multiple stories being told in the ‘verse. I agree with her, and would argue that it’s a feature and not a bug. Sidebar: another story for another day. But while I don’t think there’s one unifying principle that picks up all the details for all the stories in a way that is coherent, I do think there’s one primary story which actually does make sense, which drives the plotting involved with souls. And that’s the story of what the vampires with souls mean to Buffy and her journey. Cause as Joss has said, the question you always have to start with is “what’s the Buffy of it”.
The Buffy of the Vampire with Souls: The Basic Theory
Buffy is a human being who has been endowed with special powers that are at least associated with the demonic. One of her central projects in BtVS is coming to terms with the two sides of herself, finding a way to reconcile them. One way to dramatize Buffy’s internal struggle to reconcile the demonic with the human is to involve her in romances with creatures that have similar struggles. And what could serve that purpose better than a vampire with a soul, a demon who struggles with his humanity the way Buffy struggles with her demonic power? Enter Angel.
In falling in love with Angel, Buffy is falling in love with the singular creature in her acquaintance who has both demonic and human forces within him. His soul tames the demon and allows her to enter into a relationship with the demonic, which is a vehicle for coming to terms with the demonic within her. The demonic here is often understood as purely evil, but it’s clear that a domesticated version of it is good: it’s a source of strength and power and sheer exuberance. Sidebar: Angel is the antithesis of exuberant, of course; but check out Angelus!. When Buffy attempts an actual union with Angel, however, things fall apart in a devastating way. It turns out that for Angel, the price of loving Buffy is losing his own soul. Buffy’s first experience with trying to be in relationship with the demonic is traumatic and deeply scarring. After a yearlong coda wherein Buffy and Angel try to pretend that they can be together without being together, they separate, and Buffy retreats from the demonic side of herself. (Bad experiences with Faith are a part of this movement).
Buffy’s next move is to ignore the demonic side of herself by entering into a romantic relationship with Riley. Riley’s synthetic superpower makes this possible, I think, but the relationship is never fully satisfying to Buffy who needs to make peace with the genuine demonic within her. Two things happen that spell an end to Buffy’s relationship with Riley. First, the big spell at the end of season 4 unleashes the primitive slayer basically forcing Buffy to reengage with the project of coming to terms with the demonic origins of her own power. Second, Riley loses the synthetic power-up and ceases to be able to engage that side of Buffy in any way. Buffy has to stop pretending that she’s just a human, and that means she has to risk going into the dark, a journey which begins not remotely coincidentally in an episode called Into the Woods. Her refusal to engage and reconcile herself with her demonic side, which is the source of her power, but also a potential source of exuberance, is a big part of her growing death wish, I think.
But Buffy is not yet out of options. Spike is there, waiting for her in the dark. Now, Spike does NOT have a soul and is therefore NOT a fit companion for Buffy. What he does have, though, is some impulse towards the human in his demon. The judge remarked on that back in Surprise; it has been given room to grow by virtue of the chip which hindered Spike’s unfettered expression of his demonic self; and it has now manifested itself in the form of Spike’s love for Buffy. But though the demon in Spike is inclining towards the human, the absence of the soul still means he can’t mirror Buffy properly. It’s not unlike the way that Riley’s synthetic demonic powers were insufficient to mirror Buffy’s genuinely demonic side. Buffy is nonetheless drawn to Spike, but the result is that she is drawn further towards the demonic in herself, and risks losing her human side altogether. But where Angel’s love for Buffy cost him his soul, it turns out that Spike’s love for Buffy ultimately drives him to seek a soul.
This is huge. Where Buffy’s first effort to enter into her necessary dance with the dark ended in disaster, her second (reluctantly entered into) dance with the dark ends up with her having inspired a vampire to the unprecedented act of seeking a soul. Painful and ugly as their relationship often was, Spike’s quest for the soul turns Buffy’s dangerous dance with the dark into something quite beautiful. As a result of it, she now has a partner who can be the perfect mirror for her. He’s a vampire with a soul, but unlike Angel he’s the vampire who wanted the soul. Buffy’s reconciliation with Spike over the course of season seven reflects her own internal reconciliation with her own power. By the end, she and Spike have become very close, and she has become very confident and sure of herself as a human who can exercise demonic powers without being overwhelmed by them. It is only at this stage in her journey that Buffy can think about sharing her powers with others, and it’s no coincidence that Buffy comes to possess the scythe which is the vehicle for spreading her powers with the aid of the strength Spike gave her (End of Days). Spike’s quest for the soul is an essential moment in Buffy’s story.
Some Further Thoughts
1. Notice that Angel, the vampire who was cursed with a soul that his demonic self utterly loathes, serves as Buffy’s mirror during a stage in her journey when she regards her own calling as a slayer as a curse. In addition to the fact that she literally cannot be united with Angel without unleashing evil upon the world, Buffy needs to transcend Angel if she is ever to get to a stage where she can regard her slayer calling as a gift and not a curse or a burden. Bangel just is not a possible long run outcome on this account. Not without something earth shattering that would induce Angelus to actually seek a soul himself. Angel’s true story, which is now (appropriately) distinct from Buffy’s is about how one comes to terms with being human when one’s deepest nature is in rebellion against that project. Whether this is even possible remains an open question.
2. Spike’s acquisition of the soul is in service to Buffy’s story. But in terms of his own story it is also a good thing. As I argued above, there was always an inclination to the human present in Spike, and with the soul he steps into the full realization of that yearning. At the end of season 5, we see that Spike has come to see, even without the soul, that he aspires to be at least treated like a man. The acquisition of a soul which allows him to enter into an even deeper relationship with the human side of himself is just a fulfillment of that aspiration.
3. Because Spike has been such an essential part of Buffy’s story, we need to know how this relationship resolved in order to understand where Buffy is at. Does she still think that she loves Angel more? If so, she hasn’t embraced her demonic side as well as she might have, because this would represent a yearning to be with someone who has a big rift between his demonic side and his human side. Or does the apparent lack of peace Buffy is currently suffering reflect the way things finally resolved between them when Spike returned from the dead? The Buffy we saw at the end of The Chosen could have been done with this part of her journey. The Buffy we see now is not nearly so obviously done with that part of her journey. So what happened? We need to know. This is the second biggest reason why I think it would be strange if Joss didn’t tell us more about Spike in season 8. Sidebar: the first biggest reason is that he’d have closed out the story in a few bubbles if it were really over in his mind.
4. As should be obvious, Spike’s acquisition of the soul is NOT a weak echo of Angel’s story, but rather is the story redone in the right key. Buffy doesn’t need a demon cursed with a soul; she needs a demon who fought for one.
5. A good deal of the angst of Spuffy in season five and especially season six is because in the context of this framework things couldn’t work between Buffy and Spike until Spike had a soul. But it’s also the case that there’s an extra helping of angst because Buffy is working out her trauma with Angel in the context of her relationship with Spike. It would take a lot of space to elaborate on this, but a lot of the abuse Buffy heaps upon Spike strikes me as a projection of her anger at Angel onto Spike. I think that’s part of why emotionally, Buffy’s reconciliation with Spike serves also to heal her long-standing wounds from the debacle with Angel. Spike has given Buffy a great deal, including absorbing a lot of the suffering that was really due to Angel and not him. I think that’s intentional. Spike has made a huge gift to Buffy, sacrificing his whole self. Joss’s choice to let him die apparently in the full belief that his love was not returned (despite the fact that he’s absorbed the anger and pain caused by Angel) just underscores the gratuitous nature of what Spike has done for Buffy. Spike is a big hero here. Indeed, instead of complaining that Spike has been given short shrift by Whedon, the more live concern strikes me as being whether or not Spike’s role ends up outshining Buffy’s to the detriment of whatever feminist message the show is supposed to be conveying.
6. The standard story that we get from interviews with Whedon, other writers, and Marsters is that Spike was supposed to be killed off in season 2; was brought back in season 4 to take up the snarky truth-telling position vacated by Cordelia; and then (presumably because of the character’s popularity) got sucked into the role of being Buffy’s major romantic partner. That might well be true. But if you take this story that I’ve just told and read through from the very beginning you’ll find a shocking amount of supporting detail. Angelus as having no humanity in contrast to Spike’s humanity is established early on. Buffy’s insight into this is established as early as Lie to Me. There’s a long-standing sexual tension between the two, both in how the actors respond to one another and in things like their mutual expression of preference when it comes to who they want to fight (What’s My Line). [I’ve read recently that for years Jane Espenson had a note taped to her wall that said that Buffy has sex dreams about Spike.] In season four, there is an awful lot of detail that could be marshaled in support of the argument that Riley was always going to be an inadequate solution to Buffy’s problem and that Spike was going to end up being the answer no matter how unlikely that seemed to be on the surface. One example of many is Something Blue when it is exactly Buffy’s fear of being attracted to the dark Spike that moves her from utterly indifferent to Riley to thinking that’s a direction she wants to go. I’m not going to say that this story was planned from the get go. But I am saying that you can read the whole show as if it was planned from the get go. However that came about, the results are pretty cool. And if this is how Joss treats a character he doesn’t like, then I’m really glad that he didn’t like Spike.
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I also don't remember the bit of dialogue in the dream.
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GILES: Don't push me around. You know I have a great deal to do.
SPIKE: I've hired myself out as an attraction. (Strikes a threatening pose. The people ooh and ahh, camera flashes going off.)
(color)GILES: Sideshow freak?
(B&W shot: Spike flips up the collar of his coat.)
SPIKE: Well, at least it's showbiz. (Poses again.)
(Color)
GILES: (very confused) What am I supposed to do with all of this?
SPIKE: (off screen) You gotta make up your mind, Rupes.
(B&W shot of Spike.)
SPIKE: What are you wasting your time for? (Pose)Haven't you figured it all out yet, with your enormous squishy frontal lobes? (Another pose, more oohs, flashbulbs)
(Color: Giles walking across the crypt.)
GILES: I still think Buffy should have killed you.
(B&W: Spike looks annoyed. He strikes a Jesus on-the-cross pose. Very loud oohs, cameras flashing.)
GILES: Honestly, you meet the most appalling sorts of people.
(He walks on. In the background we see Spike still in Jesus pose, more flashbulbs going off.)
Now, what I just noticed? Giles is viewing Spike in a very black and white kind of way, even though he knows it's "part of a show," and he mentions that Buffy should have killed him, as he'll say in s7. Giles had to make up his mind...about Spike, and how much of a distraction (and attraction--pun intended) he is. As he walks away from Spike, Spike is still in black and white in his crucifixion pose. Foreshadow to LMPTM? (sorry for the long post, but the quotes were necessary)