There seems to be so much to say about Angel that Buffy gets (to my taste short shrift). I’d certainly agree that she has a view of Angel based largely on what she wants to see but I wouldn’t really characterise her illusions of him as being of the knight-protector or romantic hero variety. Buffy even at 16 doesn’t strike me as the Catherine Moorland type. Buffy’s no Willow, based on the Hemerey flashbacks she’s actually relatively experienced with boys or at least high school boys. Angel has, as Cordelia put it, “salty goodness” simply by virtue of being hot and old (as in not a high school boy old). He’s not so much the father type as the type Daddy would hate.
Daddy does come into it, but Buffy’s relationship with her father strays from him being her hero-protector early on and never recovers. He takes her ice-skating, he shares her otherness but then he starts cheating on Joyce, fighting with her, sending Buffy to be fixed by a mental institution before finally abandoning her altogether. Buffy’s relationship with Angel follows something of the same pattern. Initially he’s a potential fellow demon hunter and she’s interested but it’s all a bit of fun. But then he turns out to be a vampire, one of the impossible ones she’ll feel compelled to go after knowing that they’ll always live down to her expectations just like Daddy did. Angel brings living down to a whole new level. She kills him but rather than being cathartic it devastates her. And then he comes back.
The thing is while I think Angel would like to see himself as Buffy’s protector (Angel wants to be everybody’s daddy) when he comes back from hell he’s more like a child, he’s the one who needs saving. For me the definitive image of their later relationship is him fallen to her knees at the end of Beauty and the Beasts. She saves him or tries to again and again (Amends, Graduation Day), it only stops when he ups and leaves. There’s a similar pattern to her relationship with Spike, he’s also the impossible one who then becomes the one who needs saving and then he leaves. There’s a reason she can’t tell them apart.
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Date: 2010-09-14 06:44 am (UTC)Daddy does come into it, but Buffy’s relationship with her father strays from him being her hero-protector early on and never recovers. He takes her ice-skating, he shares her otherness but then he starts cheating on Joyce, fighting with her, sending Buffy to be fixed by a mental institution before finally abandoning her altogether. Buffy’s relationship with Angel follows something of the same pattern. Initially he’s a potential fellow demon hunter and she’s interested but it’s all a bit of fun. But then he turns out to be a vampire, one of the impossible ones she’ll feel compelled to go after knowing that they’ll always live down to her expectations just like Daddy did. Angel brings living down to a whole new level. She kills him but rather than being cathartic it devastates her. And then he comes back.
The thing is while I think Angel would like to see himself as Buffy’s protector (Angel wants to be everybody’s daddy) when he comes back from hell he’s more like a child, he’s the one who needs saving. For me the definitive image of their later relationship is him fallen to her knees at the end of Beauty and the Beasts. She saves him or tries to again and again (Amends, Graduation Day), it only stops when he ups and leaves. There’s a similar pattern to her relationship with Spike, he’s also the impossible one who then becomes the one who needs saving and then he leaves. There’s a reason she can’t tell them apart.