Essayficathon entry
Jan. 1st, 2005 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookAt last! My entry for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
itsabigrock's Essayficathon - I'd started writing this months ago, had it about 80 percent done (or so I thought) and then completely revised it at least three times over the last three days. Gah! I'm exhausted. I'd hoped to be done much, much earlier so as to spend today commenting on everyone else's fanfic stories to which I owe comments and typing up New Year's greetings and my own general strange feelings on this past year, but I guess that'll all have to wait. Tomorrow. Tomorrow is for memories and thanks and resolutions, today is for getting this particular weight off my brain. (Edited on Jan. 2 to correct a quotation error - thanks, azdak, for the catch.)
The original request was bygermaine_pet: "Religious metaphors in the Buffyverse. Specifically, how large a role do Christian metaphors and values play on Buffy and Angel, and does their influence overshadow the values and mores of other religions or beliefs? Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) As someone who was raised Catholic, the Christian metaphors always leapt out at me. Would viewers of other faiths feel alienated from the Buffyverse belief system because of this?"
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I've written on this topic before in a much more narrow sense - e.g., an episode review of "Chosen" in which I (blasphemy alert!) point out that Spike is essentially a Jesus figure, and an essay about Christian allegory in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe, again focusing on the martyr imagery of the series - but a larger look at religion in the Buffyverse in general proved to be an irresistible lure. Christian imagery and themes are indeed displayed so frequently in Buffy and Angel that even a casual viewer would have a hard time missing them - in particular, images relating to the martyrdom of Christ are continually repeated, in a regular grab bag of holy card visuals. The most popular item in the poker hand is the ever-popular Body of Christ card - battle injuries are often rendered metaphorical, in bleeding hands that evoke the stigmata, a wound in the side recalling Christ being stabbed with a spear on the cross, etcetera (e.g., BtVS Season 5, "Spiral"). Buffy's martyrdom in "The Gift" features a cruciform swan dive; Spike is shown in rather more literal crucifixion poses; Angel is frequently tortured reminiscent of Christ's scourging by the Roman troops. Tara is a Madonna-like figure offering sympathy in "Dead Things"; Cordelia's prophetic visions from The Powers That Be are accompanied by the ecstatic agonies of a saint, and her suffering increases in tandem with her saintlike selflessness and willingness to bear them. As a clincher for the Saint Cordelia imagery, in AtS Season 3 she is actually taken up to heaven in a parody of The Rapture (or The Assumption, if one wants to go with the Madonna reading). We have even have a sort of Immaculate Conception, in the fact that Darla gets pregnant by Angel.
Now, in my previous writings, I'd put forth the opinion that these images were not so much an attempt at a meaningful allegorial message as much as sheer visual impact, signals to the viewer of the larger concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice that are associated with heroism in the general Judeo-Christianity belief stew of the Western world. But in re-examining the issue, I think there was a larger point that I'd missed - the very fact that all that Christian imagery was expected to be recognized for what it is.
By the Book
Obviously, a certain amount of Christian imagery in BtVS/AtS is simply inherited from the conventions of the vampire genre, with its loaded trunkfulls of pop-culture baggage. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, after all, a story about slaying vampires, so it makes use of the traditional weaponry that goes with this vocation, crosses and holy water (more on this later). However, even within that context, BtVS goes above and beyond by coding Bible references and religious imagery into the show's very core construction. The Book of Revelation in particular comes up a lot in Buffy and Angel - "Harbingers"; "The Beast" (used twice); the consistent use of the word "apocalypse"; even the term "Hellmouth" is Biblical, as is of course "hell," but a popular medieval conception of the entrance to hell was as a literal "mouth" that devoured sinners. Religion is, in fact, thicky interwoven with every aspect of BtVS, from the Anton LaVey-style pentagrams and mystic runes that go with the practice of black magic to the blasphematastic rituals performed by "demons." There's an inherent contradiction to all this - actually, more than one contradiction, but I'll get to that - in that most "demons" shown in the BtVS/AtS universe aren't religiously motivated, i.e., they aren't demons because they've denied Christ or serve Satan. Many "demons," such as Lorne, come from other dimensions altogther, which on the sci-fi surface of things would seem to make them aliens, not demons. And yet, other dimensions are uniformly referred to as "hell" dimensions, and visitors from such are called "demons." Why?
Simply put, because discussions of good vs. evil are easier to frame within a Biblical context. The viewership is meant to respond to the heroes as "good" and the villains as "evil," and a "demon" needs no explanation to an audience familiar with Christian lore. BtVS/AtS, like the vampire legends behind their core concepts, are piggybacked on two thousand years of collected Christian culture.
But do all those cultural references necessarily imply a conscious allegory to Christianity in the text? No, they do not. They do assume familiarity from its audience, but if there's a message being presented about Christianity, it's not a particularly supportive one.
Let's take a look at a little wordplay based on an actual scripture quotation.
*From Angel, Season 5, "Not Fade Away":
ANGEL
This may come out a little pretentious, but...
one of you will betray me.
(Spike raises his hands eagerly)
Wes.
SPIKE
Oh.
(puts his hand down, then suddenly hopeful)
Can I deny you three times?
This exchange makes no sense at all in the context of the story unless it is recognized by the viewership for exactly what it is, a reference to a New Testament Bible quotation. Angel here is casting himself in the role of Jesus, which is why he's bashful about sounding "pretentious." Viewers are meant to have a knee-jerk reaction to this recognizable bit of script, something akin to an amorous suitor quoting Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and then posssibly extend the reference into allegory. To someone raised outside the sphere of Christian stories and traditions, this sort of dialogue would be likely to come off as cryptic code.
Does the allegory work? Maybe. If one draws a parallel to the actual Biblical story, Angel's intent is to martyr himself for the greater good of humanity, like Jesus. Wes is being pegged as Judas, the betrayer, which works, because Wes has indeed betrayed Angel before, by stealing away his infant son. And although Spike has also betrayed Angel in the past (BtVS Season 2, "Becoming Part 2"), he is denied the betrayer's role here, and instead assigned the role of Peter, the disciple who denied Jesus three times, the "rock" upon which the Christian church was built. And since Wesley dies in this episode, as Judas does post-betrayal, and for all we know Spike does carry Angel's "good news" to the outside world - Angel does give up the Shanshu prophecy, his hope to become human, presumably to Spike, which makes the final reading of the series more than a little ironic - maybe all this works. After all, if Angel sacrifices himself so that others can be redeemed, maybe he is like Jesus. Except for... well, for the killing those who oppose you instead of turning the other cheek part. Um, okay then. At any rate, for any of this, one must extend a fairly large amount of credit to what happens after the credits roll, and to the idea that Angel's judgment is the equivalent of divinely inspired. Hm.
Buffy and Angel are not the work of Bible scholars. A pick-and-choose buffet approach is taken to the use of Christian symbology, methodology, and terms, all of which are deployed haphazardly at best. For example, "apocalypse."
From Wikipedia:
The term "apocalypse" was introduced by F. Lücke (1832) as a description of the New Testament book of Revelation. An apocalypse, in the terminology of early Jewish and Christian literature, is a revelation of hidden things given by God to a chosen prophet; this term is more often used to describe the written account of such a revelation.
In Buffy and Angel, "apocalypse" is the commonly used term for any possible world-ending threat. One has to do quite a bit of work to make this fit into the greater scheme of Buffy as an allegory - would Buffy be "the chosen prophet," because of her occasional prophetic dreams, or would the "hidden things" revealed be the tomes in the keeping of the Watcher's Council? And if either of those is true, who is "God"? Angel is rather a better fit here, with Doyle and then Cordelia as direct conduits from The Powers That Be. In either case, however, "apocalypse" is not used to indicate the coming of a Biblical Armageddon, the final world-ending battle between the massed armies of God and Satan (or their symbolic analogues), something like the battle between the forces of The Fellowship of Middle Earth and Sauron in The Lord of the Rings (which is in itself, of course, a Christian allegory). If that were the implication of "apocalypse" in either series, we'd hear the term used far less often, and it would imply a final battle, like the Norse Ragnarok, with final judgment to follow. Buffy and Angel aren't interested in an actual eschatological discussion of the end of the world. This isn't Left Behind.
No, "apocalypse" is used because centuries' worth of apocalyptic literature has pre-loaded the term with all sorts of fun and fraught meanings: weird visions, gross monsters, bowing down to false gods, death, destruction, cataclysm... all this gets carried in the train of "apocalypse" the way a school bus carries germs. An "Apocalypse" is big and splashy - it outweighs a garden-variety battle the way "The Beast" outweighs a garden-variety monster. They are words that add a video game-like scaling up to the proceedings, a sense of facing down the biggest Boss on the highest level for a season climax.
Buffy and Angel aren't so much pushing a Christian agenda as using its themes and pictures to make selected points. Often those points are ironic - saintlike iconography applied to a characters who we well know are not saints - while on other occasions (or sometimes the same occasions), the parallels seem to be on the level, such as both series' apparent opinion that selfless sacrifice and willingness to endure torture equal at least some level of heroism, rather in the way of the early Christian martyrs, upon whom sainthood was conferred mostly for keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of impending death by lions or what have you in the Roman Coliseum.
But submission to a greater deity's will or its rules is not the ultimate measure of BtVS or AtS - free will and positive action is, and that theme frequently comes into direct conflict with the Christian imagery used, most of which implies acceptance of a predetermined destiny. Which message ended up getting more strongly transmitted at the end of the day is kind of an exercise for the viewer. Should one submit to a celestial fate - indeed, does one even have a choice about that? - or fight against it?
Dressed For Success
Of course, any discussion of Christian symbols in Buffy the Vampire Slayer must start by acknowledging the debt the series owes to the century's worth of legends, books, plays, comics, and films about vampires that came before it. These previous sources established a general baseline for the tried-and-true arsenal for any self-respecting fearless vampire killer, and Christian paraphenalia such as crucifixes and holy water form a part of that arsenal right alongside all the other usual suspects for the killing or repelling of vampires - stake to the heart, beheading, sunlight, swags of garlic.
However, in BtVS, crosses and holy water are simply tools, no more signficant than axes or crossbows. Unlike, say, the '80s vampire movie Fright Night, in which a cross is useless unless the bearer truly believes in it, or Blade, in which vampires have no connection to religion at all and crosses and holy water simply don't work, Buffy's silver cross necklace does work, but it's a ward against demons, not a sign of her religious beliefs. There's even a joke about this in the Season 7 episode "Conversations with Dead People," in which an old high school classmate cum recently risen vampire tells Buffy that her old school chums had thought she was "heavy religious." The joke obviously being that she's not.
In fact, most characters appearing in BtVS or AtS seem to have no religious affiliation at all and can be assumed to be agnostic, much like BtVS's creator, Joss Whedon, who has gone on record about his atheism. Self-identified Christians in either BtVS or AtS are few, and those that do appear do so for joke purposes, such as the Christian Fellowship pamphleteers that harrass Buffy in "The Freshman," or the nuns she saves in "Triangle," which she then follows up by asking about the convent lifestyle (in all apparent innocence): "Do you have to be, like, super religious?" We discover (in the BtVS Season 4 episode "Who Are You?") that Buffy's erstwhile boyfriend Riley attends church - but again, this is presented as a punchline. It's funny that Riley goes to church because none of the regular characters do.
The one exception to this no-religious-affiliation rule is Willow, who is Jewish. However, Willow's Jewishness arguably has little bearing on her character - it's an identifying quirk, like her red hair. Her heritage is defined strictly by rituals and symbols: she mentions Bat Mitzvah; she puts pebbles on a gravestone; she tells us that her father would be unamused to see crosses nailed to the walls of her bedroom for a disinvite spell; reminds the gang her family doesn't celebrate Christmas. That's it.
Willow is also identified as a "Wicca," which in the real world is an actual belief system centering around the worship of a mother goddess, but in BtVS is used as a blanket term to suggest not only witchcraft, but also a dry wink at lesbianism. The ideologies behind any of these practices are never discussed. In the larger scheme of things, Willow's Jewishness or Wicca-ness seem to exist merely to remind viewers that she's not Christian, in defiance to what otherwise might be a default assumption for a North American audience, inasmuch as later comments about her lesbianism are there to remind viewers that she's not straight. (One can practically draw a direct line connecting "Not everyone worships Santa!" and "Gay now!")
Gods and Monsters
Idealogically, BtVS and AtS are downright anti-religious. Characters most strongly identified with gods or religious practices tend to be evil, fond of hokey ceremonies and cultism. The BtVS Season 1 episode "The Harvest" shows The Master initiating his protege Luke with a blood sharing ritual that plays as a parody of communion. Spike's ritual to restore Drusilla's strength requires a church location, chanting, a Satanic cross, a swinging incense burner, and binding Angel and Drusilla together by the hands through which a dagger is then plunged like some kind of weird cross between a Catholic mass and a Jewish wedding. (Spike also wears gloves to handle the cross, summoning up images of priestly vestments, a little detail lovingly replicated in my 12" action figure.) The First Evil's ritual to open the Hellmouth through the distinctly Satanic-looking goat-headed Seal of Danzalthar features mystic runes, ceremonial knives, and a blood-draining near-crucifixion. Caleb, a BtVS Season 7 villain, rants at the viewer in the manner of an over-the-top TV evangelist, incessantly dropping bon mots from his own personal wacked-out interpretation of the King James Version. These things are all, the series suggests, either bad or at the very least, mock-worthy.
Organized religion is also casually dismissed as rule. The Angel episode "Shiny Happy People" in particular plays an outright critique of religious congregations - devotion to Jasmine and her doctrine of love is painted as benevolent on the surface, but an ultimately creepy form of mind-control. Devotees of Jasmine have essentially no free will - like Obi-Wan Kenobi's use of The Force over "the weak-minded," Jasmine can work her hypnotic compulsion to create a mass mind that wants to absorb or destroy all unbelievers for the good of the whole. As a social critique, it's been done before, notably in science fiction - the classic Star Trek episode "The Return of the Archons," most obviously ("You are not one with The Body!").
Star Trek is actually an interesting example here - since its agenda was to present a hopeful fantasy future, Star Trek tended to focus on whatever culprits were seen as holding society back. Religion was clearly seen as one of these items and so was a metaphorically popular target. Figures of worship often turned out to be insane, or computers, or both, and "traditional" beliefs were frequently debunked as pointless repetition of customs that had lost all meaning in the mists of time. Star Trek's future vision was one of racial and gender equality (by '60s standards, anyway), and of humans striving to overcome their species' own brutish, animal nature through constant struggle and evolution. Retrograde rules made by outdated gods were seen as limiting, standing in the way of growth. "Who Mourns for Adonis" stated this explictly, with a parable about the Greek god Apollo, who wanted to care for humans as a father to children. Just as children grow up, Kirk says (I'm paraphrasing), humankind outgrew its need for gods.
Both BtVS and AtS essentially share this point of view. All gods are created equal here - they are merely powerful beings, hardly omnipotent or unknowable. They are typically selfish or outright evil (e.g., Glory; Janus, the chaos god worshipped by Ethan Rayne; the Lair of the White Worm-style Snake worshipped by frat boys in "Reptile Boy," etc.), or at best, like Jasmine, want to care for humanity as children, just like Apollo, and are critiqued for it in nearly the same way. When Angel triggers the downfall of Jasmine, the "Power That Was," by revealing her to be a monster, we get this exchange on his reasoning.
From Angel, Season 4, "Peace Out":
ANGEL
(from behind her)
Jasmine, it's over. You've lost.
JASMINE
(turns to face Angel)
I've lost? Do you have any idea what you've done?
ANGEL
What I had to do.
JASMINE
No. No, Angel. There are no absolutes. No right and wrong.
Haven't you learned anything working for the Powers?
There are only choices. I offered paradise. You chose this!
ANGEL
Because I could.
Because that's what you took away from us. Choice.
JASMINE
And look what free will has gotten you.
ANGEL
Hey, I didn't say we were smart. I said it's our right.
It's what makes us human.
JASMINE
But you're not human.
ANGEL
Working on it.
Angel's argument goes to the heart of what he believes makes one human, making your own choices - "our fate has to be our own, or we're nothing." Since he is a monster himself, a fact that Jasmine pointedly reminds him of, this is an important detail. The followers of Jasmine were undeniably better off in some ways under her spell - as the immediate outbreak of street riots following her defrocking as a deity would seem to bear witness - but Angel's belief puts the greater good on a lower priority level than free will, the ability to choose right from wrong.
Following the Leader
This fits, also, with the attitude the BtVS and AtS series takes toward worshippers of gods. Devotees of gods are uniformly presented as weak, overly malleable, ruthless, power-tripping, shamelessly toadying, or all of the above. Glory's munchkinlike demon attendants are perhaps the best example of the breed - childlike and ugly, without powers of their own. Worshippers borrow all their power from their god. We see this illustrated by Ethan Rayne, or any random demon-summoning character, but also by Amy and Willow, who call on ancient gods (Hecate, Osiris, etc.) for various spells.
The point of all this would seem to be that gods shouldn't be worshipped. They're more like loathsome bosses one must relentlessly flatter to get a raise, or something even more utilitarian, like a combination of buttons one must press for a special attack in a fighting video game. Angel's relationship to "The Powers That Be," who send him marching orders of a sort by way of visions through a third-party conduit (first Doyle, and then Cordelia), is businesslike at best - there are no prayers involved, no idealization, no What-Would-The-Powers-Do? Willow may joke "Hecate hates that!" about having to start a spell over, but you never see her biting her nails about placating the offended deity as anything more serious than a Miss Manners-style faux pas. "Consequences" of magic seem more like simple universal laws than punishments of the gods - an excess of frivolous demon summonings from spells gone wrong, or else physical symptoms such as headaches. Gods in the BtVS/AtS universe are real, but the characters don't spend quality time worrying about them.
This, finally, is the inherent contradiction to the BtVS/AtS universe: given the knowledge that gods are real, that talismans and incantations meant to appeal to them are indeed completely effective, living a high-risk lifestyle which might seen them delivered up into whatever afterlife judgment awaits them at any moment... why is it that none of the characters seem to have much of an opinion about religious beliefs? There are virtually no debates anywhere in either series about belief systems or talk of spirituality. It's not until characters actually up and die that such topics even begin to come up... and even then, the level of discussion is left puzzlingly open.
Life and Afterlife
In the final line of the Buffy Season 5 episode "The Body," Dawn asks about her deceased mother's spirit: "Where did she go?" In what is perhaps the Buffy series' most realistic moment, there is no answer to her question. But in the following year, we discover there is an afterlife of sorts, as Buffy returns from what she believes was heaven.
From Buffy Season 6, "Afterlife":
BUFFY
(still looking down) I was happy.
Spike looks at her in confusion.
BUFFY
Wherever I... was... I was happy. At peace.
Spike stares, shocked.
BUFFY
I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it.
Time... didn't mean anything... nothing had form...
but I was still me, you know?
(glances at him, then away)
And I was warm... and I was loved... and I was finished. Complete.
I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or... any of it, really...
but I think I was in heaven.
This gets right to the heart of the largest question of religious thought - what happens to you after you die? Where do you go? How are you judged? The Buffy series raised this question, previously left alone with that single line in "The Body," and gives an answer - there is a heaven of sorts. Whether it's a reward for Buffy's virtuous life of duty and selfless sacrifice, the default destination of all humans, or just another dimension, we're not so sure. But its existence does give rise to the corallary question - is there also a hell?
For that, we have to look at the Angel series. (The Buffy series pretty much drops the topic right after Buffy's speech in "Afterlife.") Thanks to the plight of its main character, a notorious vampire who cut a swath of destruction through Europe for over a hundred years before being cursed with the return of his soul, AtS focuses very strongly on Angel's personal quest toward redemption, which fit neatly into discussions of the afterlife. How can one know if redemption has been achieved without an outside party's judgment? And who, ultimately, gets to judge?
In Angel Season 5, this topic of hell becomes a vital one. Spike, the notorious vampire second only to Angel in bad doings, had just previously on Buffy regained his own soul by choice and died saving the world in an unarguable selfless act. Despite this, we see Spike, now a ghost, in danger of being pulled into what would appear to be a stereotypical Christian hell.
Unlike the BtVS characters, who had apparently never wondered whether the afterlife might be a meritocracy, the Angel cast are wholly unsurprised by this turn of events. "Kinda figured" and "where else would he go?" are Gunn and Wesley's answers to Fred's disturbed admission of the secret that Spike is being pulled into hell. This does not, however, mean that the AtS characters are more theologically minded than the BtVS characters - again, this is presented as a punchline to a joke. Does believing in hell mean you have to be, like, super religious?
Given the way the AtS series deals with the threat of hell, it's hard to be sure. The real architect behind Spike's threatened slip into hell is not, as it turns out, divine judgment, but a sorcerer named Pavayne. Pavayne, we're told, has "cheated hell for hundreds of years. Fed it other dirty little souls." However, if hell were truly a place automatically reserved for evildoers based on their own deeds, would not those people have gone there anyway without a push from Pavayne?
From Season 5, "Hellbound":
PAVAYNE
Disappointing.
(Spike shudders in pain)
I expected more from soul of vampire.
Too much conscience, perhaps, weighing it down.
A portal opens up in the basement right in front of Spike. It's black and slick like oil. The portal has a deep hole in the center, and long black tentacle-like arms reach out toward Spike threatening to pull him in.
PAVAYNE
Look... hell knows you're ready, plump and ripe.
Beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you...
(Spike has flashes of a vision of someone being tortured)
...damns you to suffer--forever.
(holds Spike's head up toward the portal)
You go now, William, so I can stay.
In Buffy Season 4 episode "Who Are You?", the question was raised for the first and only time why religious icons work as wards against the undead. The demon-human Frankenstein hybrid Adam approached a group of vampires with a rhetoric something like that of the heroine in Labyrinth, or the classic Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," insisting that religious symbols only have power over vampires because they believe in them. And based on empirical evidence in that episode - a group of vampires infiltrates a church to test the theory, and suffers no ill effects - Adam's hypothesis would appear to be at least somewhat correct. (Further tests on this idea are not conducted - we never see, for example, if Chinese vampires would recoil from an image of the Buddha, as in the Hammer Films/Shaw Brothers film Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.) In a similiar sense, Pavayne casting souls into hell might actually be made possible by his victims' own beliefs that they deserve it - Spike even says as much in the episode. "I do deserve to go to hell." Angel too, in the same episode, claims to believe he's hellbound regardless of what good he does in the world: "You think any of it matters? The things we did? The lives we destroyed. That's all that's ever gonna count."
What's interesting about this question is that to answer it one way says that hell is a place of judgment, decided on by an outside authority (God, or some other celestial sense of justice), or conversely, that it's a place of punishment you sentence yourself to, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And the source of the dividing line between these two concepts is how the series treats the idea of a soul.
Soul Survivors
It's hard to imagine a more religious concept than the soul.
From Wikipedia:
The soul, in several philosophical movements and many religious traditions, is the core essence of a being. In some traditions it is considered immortal; in others it is considered to be mortal. In most religions, and some philosophical movements, a soul is strongly connected with notions of the afterlife , but opinions vary wildly even within a given religion as to what happens to the soul after death . Many within these religions and philosophies believe the soul is immaterial, while others feel it may indeed be material.
As seen in BtVS/AtS, a soul cannot be sensed by a human when in place. It's invisible, except when out of body, summoned by magic. It can be extracted, held in a jar like the gas which creates neon signs. Some demons can detect its presence. Its effects, when installed, are variable - as the time-shifting demon Sahjahn points out in the AtS Season 3 episode "Lullaby," Attila the Hun had one. A soul is no guarantee of good, but without one, a being cannot help but be evil... or so we're told.
A soul was is what separates Angel from Angelus. Without a soul, Angelus has "no humanity in him." (BtVS Season 2, "The Judge.") With a soul, Angel feels remorse for his century of bad deeds. The philospher Descartes (1596-1650) singled out the presence of a (human) soul as justification for man's supremacy over animals, which were not believed to have one - a philosophy which was later used as a justification for the moral okayness of animal testing. This theory would have made Descartes quite buddy-buddy with members of The Initiative, and also Buffy herself on frequent occasion - humans are considered superior by default to demons in BtVS/AtS because they possess "souls."
But to get into the inherent contradictions of the soul and how it's presented in the series would be nigh-unto pointless - soulless Spike (and to a lesser extent, soulless Harmony) regularly displays far more empathy and affection than he should reasonably be capable of, given the definition of the soul as exemplified by Angel: with soul, good, without, "no humanity in him." Soullessness is not a guarantee of automatic bad choices anymore than soulfulness is a guarantee of automatic good ones. The key difference seems to be a concept of weighing options and thinking about the consequences. Which again brings us back to the idea of judgment, and the afterlife.
In Angel, we are treated to a flashback of Angel's re-ensouling through Darla's eyes. She confronts one of the gypsies responsible for this.
From Angel Season 2, "Darla":
DARLA
You took him from me. You stole him away.
You gave him a soul.
GYPSY
He must suffer - as all of his victims have suffered.
DARLA
That is no justice.
Whatever pain he caused to your daughter was momentary - over in an instant - or an hour.
But what you've done to him will force him to suffer for the rest of eternity!
Remove that filthy soul so my boy might return to me.
It isn't just the pain of Angel's guilt that Darla seems to be implying here. Her words seem to suggest that a soul makes Angel responsible for what he's done, opening him up to eternal judgment and damnation. By extension, this would also seem to imply that there is no afterlife for the common dusted vampire, something akin to there being no doggy heaven, dogs not generally being concerned with moral issues of right or wrong. Those without souls have no guilt.
Angel's nemesis, the vampire hunter Holtz, seems to agree with this theory, when he's told that Angel has a soul.
From Angel Season 3, "Lullaby":
SAHJAHN
That's what this is about, right?
You find out Angel has a soul,
now you're wondering if things are a little murkier - ethically speaking.
HOLTZ
Things - have never been clearer.
Releasing his soul to suffer for all eternity only makes his destruction more just, more fitting.
So then, does having a soul mean that the evil are damned to suffer eternally because some outside force has judged them wanting? Or because their own consciences have created their own "hell"? Given the evidence of the series, either profile would seem to fit. But as pointed out earlier in this essay, taking one's cues from higher powers is generally considered to be a bad thing.
What the soul ultimately appears to be about is personal responsibility.
Salvation and Damnation
It's actually in the histories of vampire characters like Angel that contain the most clues to the shows' actual take on religious thought. Over and over in the Angel series, we see redemption being referred to in a more or less secular sense, as working off a debt, repaying society for harms done. And in contrast to this, nearly all of the major vampires' stories - Angel, Darla, Spike, Drusilla - contain little parables about the cause and effects of religious belief, of virtue or sin. Given the age of the characters in question - Spike, the youngest, is over a century old, while Darla, the oldest, tops four centuries - Christianity is the default setting for their human beliefs. And over and over, we see ideas of predestination warring with what seems to be the series' most pointed driving message - that to be human, one needs to exercise the power of choice.
Darla's origin is that of a sinner who expects little from God. It starts in 1609, on her human deathbed, as she refuses the services of a priest.
From Angel Season 2, "Darla":
PRIEST
Are you prepared now to renounce Satan and beg God his forgiveness?
DARLA
God never did anything for me.
PRIEST
(to the others)
Leave us. (The two sisters leave.)
PRIEST
(to the doctor still sitting at her bedside)
You can't save her life - perhaps I can still save her soul.
(The doctor gets up and leaves.)
DARLA
My soul is well past saving.
Let the devil take me if he'll have me. Either way - I die.
Darla gets what she asked for - the devil does take her. The Master turns her into a vampire, and she spends the next four hundred years revelling in her lack of conscience. Yet in Angel Season 3, after being brought back to life as a human, then revamped, still with no thought toward personal redemption, she sacrifices her own life for her unborn child. Then, in Season 4, we see her make a spectral appearance, begging her son to not go down the same path of evil she herself took. By all appearances, and although she never went looking for redemption, Darla would seem to have been redeemed. Her personal choices, not predestination, have led her to a state of grace.
On the other hand, we have Drusilla, a devout Christian as a human who encounters Angelus hiding in a confessional.
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2, "Becoming Part 1":
DRUSILLA
Me mum says... I'm cursed. (exhales)
My seeing things is an affront to the Lord, (inhales sharply)
that only he's supposed to see anything before it happens. (inhales, sobs)
But I don't mean to, Father, I swear! (inhales) I swear!
(begins to cry) I try to be pure in his sight.
(sobs) I don't want to be an evil thing.
ANGELUS
Oh, hush, child.
The Lord has a plan for all creatures.
Even a Devil child like you.
DRUSILLA
(taken aback) A Devil?
ANGELUS
Yes! You're a spawn of Satan.
All the Hail Marys in the world aren't going to help.
The Lord will use you and smite you down.
He's like that.
DRUSILLA
(frightened) What can I do?
ANGELUS
Fulfill his plan, child. Be evil. Just give in.
DRUSILLA
No! (sobs) I want to be good.
(sobs) I want to be pure.
ANGELUS
We all do, at first. The world doesn't work that way.
Angelus's words, in the context of the series, are proved to be exactly right. Evil does triumph. Purity is defiled. Neither Drusilla's ability to see the future nor taking holy orders to become a nun can save her. Angelus kills her family, drives her insane, and then makes her into a vampire, and Drusilla never returns to be being "good" or "pure." She embodies the classic caricature of a Catholic girl gone wrong, the virgin turned wanton - an image also summoned by Darla in her initial BtVS Season 1 appearances, dressed in Britney Spears-esque Catholic schoolgirl costume. For Drusilla, there is no salvation, no matter how desperately she once wanted it. Drusilla is a victim of predestination.
The tales of the male characters, Angel and Spike, are like distorted mirror images of those of Darla and Drusilla, with similar messages. Like Darla, Angel was a sinner as a human - a drunkard, a womanizer, and a terrible disappointment to his father. He seemed to have not spent a great deal of his time as a human thinking about virtue.
As a vampire, though, Angelus spent quite a bit of time thinking about it. Angelus became an overachiever of evil, reveling in the doing of Very Bad Things under Darla's tutlelage.
Spike, on the other hand, seems to have been, if not devout, a rather typically God-fearing Christian as a human - a self-defined "good man." As a vampire, he seems to have not given the relative evil of his deeds much conscious thought.
This key difference between the two characters is best shown in the AtS Season 5 episode "Damage." Spike admits that, "For a demon... I never did think that much about the nature of evil. No. Just threw myself in. Thought it was a party. I liked the rush. I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the victims." Angel expresses exactly the opposite view of his demonic self: "I was only in it for the evil. It was everything to me. It was art. The destruction of a human being."
This difference also translates to both characters after the return of their respective souls. Angel, who did not ask for his soul's return, but was instead cursed with it with the purpose of making him suffer, did not embark on his path of redemption immediately - just as his human existence was originally purposeless, the re-ensouled Angel drifted aimlessly for years until higher powers intervened, sending him to help Buffy. Previous to this, he'd even tried to return to Darla and his old vampiric ways, only find himself unable to perform up to her standards with his new conscience in place (AtS Season 2, "Darla").
Spike, on the other hand, regained his soul on purpose, and returned immediately to Buffy in hopes of being of "use" to her. Although he states clearly that his return doesn't indicate a desire to "atone," he dramatically drapes himself over a cross in a church in a self-punishing act that would seem to be a fairly clear plea for forgiveness, both from Buffy and from God (BtVS Season 7, "Beneath You").
The key difference here would seem to be purpose - both Angel and Spike needed a clear sense of purpose to begin them on the path toward redemption.
Which brings us, finally, to the Shanshu prophecy.
Just Rewards
The Shanshu prophecy is introduced at the tail end of Angel Season 1 ("To Shanshu in LA") as a goal for which Angel must reach - if Angel gains his redemption, says the prophecy (in crude sum-up), he will win back his humanity, having been judged by some higher authority to have been found worthy. In AtS Season 5, we see Angel's hallucinatory vision of what this might look like, filtered through his own uncomfortable suspicions that Spike might be more worthy of the Shanshu prize than him. (Remember that this is Angel's dream - picture Angel speaking Spike's lines instead for best effect.)
From Angel Season 5, "Soul Purpose":
SPIKE
(smiling modestly)
Well, this is, uh... Thank you, everyone.
Um... I don't know what to say.
(laughter all around)
I'm just a... working-class bloke fulfilling his destiny.
It was nothing, really.
Angel can be seen in the background looking all meek, contrasting sharply against the confident demeanor of Spike right now.
FRED
Nothing? Spike, you single-handedly ended Armageddon
and turned the world into a beautiful, happily-ever-after,
candy mountain place where all our dreams come true.
(gestures toward the window)
The others behind Fred follow suit with a cascading gesture toward the window. Outside, downtown Los Angeles is depicted as a fairytale castle with blue skies and green hills and bright sunshine.
SPIKE
Beautiful, isn't it?
GUNN
The living end. And now... it's time for your reward.
WESLEY
Yes.
(points at Spike enthusiastically)
Your reward!
SPIKE
But I didn't do this for a reward.
GUNN
Well, that's why you're getting one.
Crowd oohs and ahhs as a blue fairy floats into the room toward Spike.
WESLEY
After all, anyone who saves the universe from eternal bloodshed, horror,
and misery deserves to get what they've always wanted.
FRED
Deserves to become a real boy.
Now, what was that again about judgment by higher powers?
Judgment, judgment, judgment... it comes up again and again. We see Angel fight for Darla's life in AtS Season 2 in an episode named "The Trial," and Spike fight for to get his soul back in BtVS Season 6 in "Two to Go" and "Grave" by enduring - you guessed it - "trials."
Ultimately, in both BtVS and AtS, judgment of a higher power is not the point. Free will is, and the desire to use one's power to change the world for the better. This message is rather severely muddied in the waters of both series' finales, thanks to a number of last-minute plot introductions that would seem to directly contradict this idea (magically appearing amulets and axes, deus ex machina spells, divine visions from The Powers That Be), but just as the Christian symbology is there on a buffet-style basis for us to pick and choose through, we're meant to gloss over that part, focus on the actions of the main characters. Angel decides, finally, that a reward is not the point, something he pretty clearly knew all along ("But I didn't do this for a reward / that's why you're getting one"). The Shanshu was a distraction. When it comes into conflict with what Angel truly wants to accomplish - the destruction of the Senior Partners' most power agents on Earth - he promptly signs it away. Angel's not doing this for a reward. Neither was Darla. And by the end, neither was Spike.
If there is a hell or heaven, BtVs and AtS seem to say, we make it ourselves... metaphorically speaking. Religion is no sanctuary - nuns are vampire candy, monks cower and cringe. Goodness untested by evil proves nothing. It's only through trying to make the world better for others, not ourselves, that we earn our souls' final reward. And one's own conscience is the real final judge. And just as Angel loses his soul through a moment of "perfect happiness," we must never really believe we deserve a reward.
But... depending on which passages of the Bible one reads, who's to say if this philosophy is non-Christian? In many ways it's exactly on target with the Christian message - selflessly helping one's fellow humans. In other ways, it goes directly against it, but elevating the self as the ultimate arbiter, in defiance to any kind of holy judgment of God. At best, it's a catch as catch-can view of Christianity cum humanism, where Jesus had some good ideas, but picking through them like Bartlett's quotations is a totally okay plan.
From Angel Season 4, "Deep Down":
ANGEL
What you did to me - was unbelievable, Connor.
But then I got stuck in a hell dimension by my girlfriend one time for a hundred years,
so three months under the ocean actually gave me perspective.
Kind of a M. C. Esher perspective--but I did get time to think.
About us, about the world.
Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel.
But that's why there's us. Champions.
It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference.
We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.
You're not a part of that yet. I hope you will be.
(Angel moves to stand in front of Connor) I love you, Connor.
(Quietly, after a beat) Now get out of my house.
What would a viewer who was not raised Christian make of all this? I'm really not sure.
*all script quotations and transcripts from BuffyWorld.
itsabigrock's Essayficathon - I'd started writing this months ago, had it about 80 percent done (or so I thought) and then completely revised it at least three times over the last three days. Gah! I'm exhausted. I'd hoped to be done much, much earlier so as to spend today commenting on everyone else's fanfic stories to which I owe comments and typing up New Year's greetings and my own general strange feelings on this past year, but I guess that'll all have to wait. Tomorrow. Tomorrow is for memories and thanks and resolutions, today is for getting this particular weight off my brain. (Edited on Jan. 2 to correct a quotation error - thanks, azdak, for the catch.) The original request was by
germaine_pet: "Religious metaphors in the Buffyverse. Specifically, how large a role do Christian metaphors and values play on Buffy and Angel, and does their influence overshadow the values and mores of other religions or beliefs? Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) As someone who was raised Catholic, the Christian metaphors always leapt out at me. Would viewers of other faiths feel alienated from the Buffyverse belief system because of this?"---------
I've written on this topic before in a much more narrow sense - e.g., an episode review of "Chosen" in which I (blasphemy alert!) point out that Spike is essentially a Jesus figure, and an essay about Christian allegory in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe, again focusing on the martyr imagery of the series - but a larger look at religion in the Buffyverse in general proved to be an irresistible lure. Christian imagery and themes are indeed displayed so frequently in Buffy and Angel that even a casual viewer would have a hard time missing them - in particular, images relating to the martyrdom of Christ are continually repeated, in a regular grab bag of holy card visuals. The most popular item in the poker hand is the ever-popular Body of Christ card - battle injuries are often rendered metaphorical, in bleeding hands that evoke the stigmata, a wound in the side recalling Christ being stabbed with a spear on the cross, etcetera (e.g., BtVS Season 5, "Spiral"). Buffy's martyrdom in "The Gift" features a cruciform swan dive; Spike is shown in rather more literal crucifixion poses; Angel is frequently tortured reminiscent of Christ's scourging by the Roman troops. Tara is a Madonna-like figure offering sympathy in "Dead Things"; Cordelia's prophetic visions from The Powers That Be are accompanied by the ecstatic agonies of a saint, and her suffering increases in tandem with her saintlike selflessness and willingness to bear them. As a clincher for the Saint Cordelia imagery, in AtS Season 3 she is actually taken up to heaven in a parody of The Rapture (or The Assumption, if one wants to go with the Madonna reading). We have even have a sort of Immaculate Conception, in the fact that Darla gets pregnant by Angel.
Now, in my previous writings, I'd put forth the opinion that these images were not so much an attempt at a meaningful allegorial message as much as sheer visual impact, signals to the viewer of the larger concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice that are associated with heroism in the general Judeo-Christianity belief stew of the Western world. But in re-examining the issue, I think there was a larger point that I'd missed - the very fact that all that Christian imagery was expected to be recognized for what it is.
By the Book
Obviously, a certain amount of Christian imagery in BtVS/AtS is simply inherited from the conventions of the vampire genre, with its loaded trunkfulls of pop-culture baggage. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, after all, a story about slaying vampires, so it makes use of the traditional weaponry that goes with this vocation, crosses and holy water (more on this later). However, even within that context, BtVS goes above and beyond by coding Bible references and religious imagery into the show's very core construction. The Book of Revelation in particular comes up a lot in Buffy and Angel - "Harbingers"; "The Beast" (used twice); the consistent use of the word "apocalypse"; even the term "Hellmouth" is Biblical, as is of course "hell," but a popular medieval conception of the entrance to hell was as a literal "mouth" that devoured sinners. Religion is, in fact, thicky interwoven with every aspect of BtVS, from the Anton LaVey-style pentagrams and mystic runes that go with the practice of black magic to the blasphematastic rituals performed by "demons." There's an inherent contradiction to all this - actually, more than one contradiction, but I'll get to that - in that most "demons" shown in the BtVS/AtS universe aren't religiously motivated, i.e., they aren't demons because they've denied Christ or serve Satan. Many "demons," such as Lorne, come from other dimensions altogther, which on the sci-fi surface of things would seem to make them aliens, not demons. And yet, other dimensions are uniformly referred to as "hell" dimensions, and visitors from such are called "demons." Why?
Simply put, because discussions of good vs. evil are easier to frame within a Biblical context. The viewership is meant to respond to the heroes as "good" and the villains as "evil," and a "demon" needs no explanation to an audience familiar with Christian lore. BtVS/AtS, like the vampire legends behind their core concepts, are piggybacked on two thousand years of collected Christian culture.
But do all those cultural references necessarily imply a conscious allegory to Christianity in the text? No, they do not. They do assume familiarity from its audience, but if there's a message being presented about Christianity, it's not a particularly supportive one.
Let's take a look at a little wordplay based on an actual scripture quotation.
*From Angel, Season 5, "Not Fade Away":
This may come out a little pretentious, but...
one of you will betray me.
(Spike raises his hands eagerly)
Wes.
SPIKE
Oh.
(puts his hand down, then suddenly hopeful)
Can I deny you three times?
This exchange makes no sense at all in the context of the story unless it is recognized by the viewership for exactly what it is, a reference to a New Testament Bible quotation. Angel here is casting himself in the role of Jesus, which is why he's bashful about sounding "pretentious." Viewers are meant to have a knee-jerk reaction to this recognizable bit of script, something akin to an amorous suitor quoting Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and then posssibly extend the reference into allegory. To someone raised outside the sphere of Christian stories and traditions, this sort of dialogue would be likely to come off as cryptic code.
Does the allegory work? Maybe. If one draws a parallel to the actual Biblical story, Angel's intent is to martyr himself for the greater good of humanity, like Jesus. Wes is being pegged as Judas, the betrayer, which works, because Wes has indeed betrayed Angel before, by stealing away his infant son. And although Spike has also betrayed Angel in the past (BtVS Season 2, "Becoming Part 2"), he is denied the betrayer's role here, and instead assigned the role of Peter, the disciple who denied Jesus three times, the "rock" upon which the Christian church was built. And since Wesley dies in this episode, as Judas does post-betrayal, and for all we know Spike does carry Angel's "good news" to the outside world - Angel does give up the Shanshu prophecy, his hope to become human, presumably to Spike, which makes the final reading of the series more than a little ironic - maybe all this works. After all, if Angel sacrifices himself so that others can be redeemed, maybe he is like Jesus. Except for... well, for the killing those who oppose you instead of turning the other cheek part. Um, okay then. At any rate, for any of this, one must extend a fairly large amount of credit to what happens after the credits roll, and to the idea that Angel's judgment is the equivalent of divinely inspired. Hm.
Buffy and Angel are not the work of Bible scholars. A pick-and-choose buffet approach is taken to the use of Christian symbology, methodology, and terms, all of which are deployed haphazardly at best. For example, "apocalypse."
From Wikipedia:
The term "apocalypse" was introduced by F. Lücke (1832) as a description of the New Testament book of Revelation. An apocalypse, in the terminology of early Jewish and Christian literature, is a revelation of hidden things given by God to a chosen prophet; this term is more often used to describe the written account of such a revelation.
In Buffy and Angel, "apocalypse" is the commonly used term for any possible world-ending threat. One has to do quite a bit of work to make this fit into the greater scheme of Buffy as an allegory - would Buffy be "the chosen prophet," because of her occasional prophetic dreams, or would the "hidden things" revealed be the tomes in the keeping of the Watcher's Council? And if either of those is true, who is "God"? Angel is rather a better fit here, with Doyle and then Cordelia as direct conduits from The Powers That Be. In either case, however, "apocalypse" is not used to indicate the coming of a Biblical Armageddon, the final world-ending battle between the massed armies of God and Satan (or their symbolic analogues), something like the battle between the forces of The Fellowship of Middle Earth and Sauron in The Lord of the Rings (which is in itself, of course, a Christian allegory). If that were the implication of "apocalypse" in either series, we'd hear the term used far less often, and it would imply a final battle, like the Norse Ragnarok, with final judgment to follow. Buffy and Angel aren't interested in an actual eschatological discussion of the end of the world. This isn't Left Behind.
No, "apocalypse" is used because centuries' worth of apocalyptic literature has pre-loaded the term with all sorts of fun and fraught meanings: weird visions, gross monsters, bowing down to false gods, death, destruction, cataclysm... all this gets carried in the train of "apocalypse" the way a school bus carries germs. An "Apocalypse" is big and splashy - it outweighs a garden-variety battle the way "The Beast" outweighs a garden-variety monster. They are words that add a video game-like scaling up to the proceedings, a sense of facing down the biggest Boss on the highest level for a season climax.
Buffy and Angel aren't so much pushing a Christian agenda as using its themes and pictures to make selected points. Often those points are ironic - saintlike iconography applied to a characters who we well know are not saints - while on other occasions (or sometimes the same occasions), the parallels seem to be on the level, such as both series' apparent opinion that selfless sacrifice and willingness to endure torture equal at least some level of heroism, rather in the way of the early Christian martyrs, upon whom sainthood was conferred mostly for keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of impending death by lions or what have you in the Roman Coliseum.
But submission to a greater deity's will or its rules is not the ultimate measure of BtVS or AtS - free will and positive action is, and that theme frequently comes into direct conflict with the Christian imagery used, most of which implies acceptance of a predetermined destiny. Which message ended up getting more strongly transmitted at the end of the day is kind of an exercise for the viewer. Should one submit to a celestial fate - indeed, does one even have a choice about that? - or fight against it?
Dressed For Success
Of course, any discussion of Christian symbols in Buffy the Vampire Slayer must start by acknowledging the debt the series owes to the century's worth of legends, books, plays, comics, and films about vampires that came before it. These previous sources established a general baseline for the tried-and-true arsenal for any self-respecting fearless vampire killer, and Christian paraphenalia such as crucifixes and holy water form a part of that arsenal right alongside all the other usual suspects for the killing or repelling of vampires - stake to the heart, beheading, sunlight, swags of garlic.
However, in BtVS, crosses and holy water are simply tools, no more signficant than axes or crossbows. Unlike, say, the '80s vampire movie Fright Night, in which a cross is useless unless the bearer truly believes in it, or Blade, in which vampires have no connection to religion at all and crosses and holy water simply don't work, Buffy's silver cross necklace does work, but it's a ward against demons, not a sign of her religious beliefs. There's even a joke about this in the Season 7 episode "Conversations with Dead People," in which an old high school classmate cum recently risen vampire tells Buffy that her old school chums had thought she was "heavy religious." The joke obviously being that she's not.
In fact, most characters appearing in BtVS or AtS seem to have no religious affiliation at all and can be assumed to be agnostic, much like BtVS's creator, Joss Whedon, who has gone on record about his atheism. Self-identified Christians in either BtVS or AtS are few, and those that do appear do so for joke purposes, such as the Christian Fellowship pamphleteers that harrass Buffy in "The Freshman," or the nuns she saves in "Triangle," which she then follows up by asking about the convent lifestyle (in all apparent innocence): "Do you have to be, like, super religious?" We discover (in the BtVS Season 4 episode "Who Are You?") that Buffy's erstwhile boyfriend Riley attends church - but again, this is presented as a punchline. It's funny that Riley goes to church because none of the regular characters do.
The one exception to this no-religious-affiliation rule is Willow, who is Jewish. However, Willow's Jewishness arguably has little bearing on her character - it's an identifying quirk, like her red hair. Her heritage is defined strictly by rituals and symbols: she mentions Bat Mitzvah; she puts pebbles on a gravestone; she tells us that her father would be unamused to see crosses nailed to the walls of her bedroom for a disinvite spell; reminds the gang her family doesn't celebrate Christmas. That's it.
Willow is also identified as a "Wicca," which in the real world is an actual belief system centering around the worship of a mother goddess, but in BtVS is used as a blanket term to suggest not only witchcraft, but also a dry wink at lesbianism. The ideologies behind any of these practices are never discussed. In the larger scheme of things, Willow's Jewishness or Wicca-ness seem to exist merely to remind viewers that she's not Christian, in defiance to what otherwise might be a default assumption for a North American audience, inasmuch as later comments about her lesbianism are there to remind viewers that she's not straight. (One can practically draw a direct line connecting "Not everyone worships Santa!" and "Gay now!")
Gods and Monsters
Idealogically, BtVS and AtS are downright anti-religious. Characters most strongly identified with gods or religious practices tend to be evil, fond of hokey ceremonies and cultism. The BtVS Season 1 episode "The Harvest" shows The Master initiating his protege Luke with a blood sharing ritual that plays as a parody of communion. Spike's ritual to restore Drusilla's strength requires a church location, chanting, a Satanic cross, a swinging incense burner, and binding Angel and Drusilla together by the hands through which a dagger is then plunged like some kind of weird cross between a Catholic mass and a Jewish wedding. (Spike also wears gloves to handle the cross, summoning up images of priestly vestments, a little detail lovingly replicated in my 12" action figure.) The First Evil's ritual to open the Hellmouth through the distinctly Satanic-looking goat-headed Seal of Danzalthar features mystic runes, ceremonial knives, and a blood-draining near-crucifixion. Caleb, a BtVS Season 7 villain, rants at the viewer in the manner of an over-the-top TV evangelist, incessantly dropping bon mots from his own personal wacked-out interpretation of the King James Version. These things are all, the series suggests, either bad or at the very least, mock-worthy.
Organized religion is also casually dismissed as rule. The Angel episode "Shiny Happy People" in particular plays an outright critique of religious congregations - devotion to Jasmine and her doctrine of love is painted as benevolent on the surface, but an ultimately creepy form of mind-control. Devotees of Jasmine have essentially no free will - like Obi-Wan Kenobi's use of The Force over "the weak-minded," Jasmine can work her hypnotic compulsion to create a mass mind that wants to absorb or destroy all unbelievers for the good of the whole. As a social critique, it's been done before, notably in science fiction - the classic Star Trek episode "The Return of the Archons," most obviously ("You are not one with The Body!").
Star Trek is actually an interesting example here - since its agenda was to present a hopeful fantasy future, Star Trek tended to focus on whatever culprits were seen as holding society back. Religion was clearly seen as one of these items and so was a metaphorically popular target. Figures of worship often turned out to be insane, or computers, or both, and "traditional" beliefs were frequently debunked as pointless repetition of customs that had lost all meaning in the mists of time. Star Trek's future vision was one of racial and gender equality (by '60s standards, anyway), and of humans striving to overcome their species' own brutish, animal nature through constant struggle and evolution. Retrograde rules made by outdated gods were seen as limiting, standing in the way of growth. "Who Mourns for Adonis" stated this explictly, with a parable about the Greek god Apollo, who wanted to care for humans as a father to children. Just as children grow up, Kirk says (I'm paraphrasing), humankind outgrew its need for gods.
Both BtVS and AtS essentially share this point of view. All gods are created equal here - they are merely powerful beings, hardly omnipotent or unknowable. They are typically selfish or outright evil (e.g., Glory; Janus, the chaos god worshipped by Ethan Rayne; the Lair of the White Worm-style Snake worshipped by frat boys in "Reptile Boy," etc.), or at best, like Jasmine, want to care for humanity as children, just like Apollo, and are critiqued for it in nearly the same way. When Angel triggers the downfall of Jasmine, the "Power That Was," by revealing her to be a monster, we get this exchange on his reasoning.
From Angel, Season 4, "Peace Out":
(from behind her)
Jasmine, it's over. You've lost.
JASMINE
(turns to face Angel)
I've lost? Do you have any idea what you've done?
ANGEL
What I had to do.
JASMINE
No. No, Angel. There are no absolutes. No right and wrong.
Haven't you learned anything working for the Powers?
There are only choices. I offered paradise. You chose this!
ANGEL
Because I could.
Because that's what you took away from us. Choice.
JASMINE
And look what free will has gotten you.
ANGEL
Hey, I didn't say we were smart. I said it's our right.
It's what makes us human.
JASMINE
But you're not human.
ANGEL
Working on it.
Angel's argument goes to the heart of what he believes makes one human, making your own choices - "our fate has to be our own, or we're nothing." Since he is a monster himself, a fact that Jasmine pointedly reminds him of, this is an important detail. The followers of Jasmine were undeniably better off in some ways under her spell - as the immediate outbreak of street riots following her defrocking as a deity would seem to bear witness - but Angel's belief puts the greater good on a lower priority level than free will, the ability to choose right from wrong.
Following the Leader
This fits, also, with the attitude the BtVS and AtS series takes toward worshippers of gods. Devotees of gods are uniformly presented as weak, overly malleable, ruthless, power-tripping, shamelessly toadying, or all of the above. Glory's munchkinlike demon attendants are perhaps the best example of the breed - childlike and ugly, without powers of their own. Worshippers borrow all their power from their god. We see this illustrated by Ethan Rayne, or any random demon-summoning character, but also by Amy and Willow, who call on ancient gods (Hecate, Osiris, etc.) for various spells.
The point of all this would seem to be that gods shouldn't be worshipped. They're more like loathsome bosses one must relentlessly flatter to get a raise, or something even more utilitarian, like a combination of buttons one must press for a special attack in a fighting video game. Angel's relationship to "The Powers That Be," who send him marching orders of a sort by way of visions through a third-party conduit (first Doyle, and then Cordelia), is businesslike at best - there are no prayers involved, no idealization, no What-Would-The-Powers-Do? Willow may joke "Hecate hates that!" about having to start a spell over, but you never see her biting her nails about placating the offended deity as anything more serious than a Miss Manners-style faux pas. "Consequences" of magic seem more like simple universal laws than punishments of the gods - an excess of frivolous demon summonings from spells gone wrong, or else physical symptoms such as headaches. Gods in the BtVS/AtS universe are real, but the characters don't spend quality time worrying about them.
This, finally, is the inherent contradiction to the BtVS/AtS universe: given the knowledge that gods are real, that talismans and incantations meant to appeal to them are indeed completely effective, living a high-risk lifestyle which might seen them delivered up into whatever afterlife judgment awaits them at any moment... why is it that none of the characters seem to have much of an opinion about religious beliefs? There are virtually no debates anywhere in either series about belief systems or talk of spirituality. It's not until characters actually up and die that such topics even begin to come up... and even then, the level of discussion is left puzzlingly open.
Life and Afterlife
In the final line of the Buffy Season 5 episode "The Body," Dawn asks about her deceased mother's spirit: "Where did she go?" In what is perhaps the Buffy series' most realistic moment, there is no answer to her question. But in the following year, we discover there is an afterlife of sorts, as Buffy returns from what she believes was heaven.
From Buffy Season 6, "Afterlife":
BUFFY
(still looking down) I was happy.
Spike looks at her in confusion.
BUFFY
Wherever I... was... I was happy. At peace.
Spike stares, shocked.
BUFFY
I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it.
Time... didn't mean anything... nothing had form...
but I was still me, you know?
(glances at him, then away)
And I was warm... and I was loved... and I was finished. Complete.
I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or... any of it, really...
but I think I was in heaven.
This gets right to the heart of the largest question of religious thought - what happens to you after you die? Where do you go? How are you judged? The Buffy series raised this question, previously left alone with that single line in "The Body," and gives an answer - there is a heaven of sorts. Whether it's a reward for Buffy's virtuous life of duty and selfless sacrifice, the default destination of all humans, or just another dimension, we're not so sure. But its existence does give rise to the corallary question - is there also a hell?
For that, we have to look at the Angel series. (The Buffy series pretty much drops the topic right after Buffy's speech in "Afterlife.") Thanks to the plight of its main character, a notorious vampire who cut a swath of destruction through Europe for over a hundred years before being cursed with the return of his soul, AtS focuses very strongly on Angel's personal quest toward redemption, which fit neatly into discussions of the afterlife. How can one know if redemption has been achieved without an outside party's judgment? And who, ultimately, gets to judge?
In Angel Season 5, this topic of hell becomes a vital one. Spike, the notorious vampire second only to Angel in bad doings, had just previously on Buffy regained his own soul by choice and died saving the world in an unarguable selfless act. Despite this, we see Spike, now a ghost, in danger of being pulled into what would appear to be a stereotypical Christian hell.
Unlike the BtVS characters, who had apparently never wondered whether the afterlife might be a meritocracy, the Angel cast are wholly unsurprised by this turn of events. "Kinda figured" and "where else would he go?" are Gunn and Wesley's answers to Fred's disturbed admission of the secret that Spike is being pulled into hell. This does not, however, mean that the AtS characters are more theologically minded than the BtVS characters - again, this is presented as a punchline to a joke. Does believing in hell mean you have to be, like, super religious?
Given the way the AtS series deals with the threat of hell, it's hard to be sure. The real architect behind Spike's threatened slip into hell is not, as it turns out, divine judgment, but a sorcerer named Pavayne. Pavayne, we're told, has "cheated hell for hundreds of years. Fed it other dirty little souls." However, if hell were truly a place automatically reserved for evildoers based on their own deeds, would not those people have gone there anyway without a push from Pavayne?
From
Disappointing.
(Spike shudders in pain)
I expected more from soul of vampire.
Too much conscience, perhaps, weighing it down.
A portal opens up in the basement right in front of Spike. It's black and slick like oil. The portal has a deep hole in the center, and long black tentacle-like arms reach out toward Spike threatening to pull him in.
PAVAYNE
Look... hell knows you're ready, plump and ripe.
Beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you...
(Spike has flashes of a vision of someone being tortured)
...damns you to suffer--forever.
(holds Spike's head up toward the portal)
You go now, William, so I can stay.
In Buffy Season 4 episode "Who Are You?", the question was raised for the first and only time why religious icons work as wards against the undead. The demon-human Frankenstein hybrid Adam approached a group of vampires with a rhetoric something like that of the heroine in Labyrinth, or the classic Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," insisting that religious symbols only have power over vampires because they believe in them. And based on empirical evidence in that episode - a group of vampires infiltrates a church to test the theory, and suffers no ill effects - Adam's hypothesis would appear to be at least somewhat correct. (Further tests on this idea are not conducted - we never see, for example, if Chinese vampires would recoil from an image of the Buddha, as in the Hammer Films/Shaw Brothers film Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.) In a similiar sense, Pavayne casting souls into hell might actually be made possible by his victims' own beliefs that they deserve it - Spike even says as much in the episode. "I do deserve to go to hell." Angel too, in the same episode, claims to believe he's hellbound regardless of what good he does in the world: "You think any of it matters? The things we did? The lives we destroyed. That's all that's ever gonna count."
What's interesting about this question is that to answer it one way says that hell is a place of judgment, decided on by an outside authority (God, or some other celestial sense of justice), or conversely, that it's a place of punishment you sentence yourself to, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And the source of the dividing line between these two concepts is how the series treats the idea of a soul.
Soul Survivors
It's hard to imagine a more religious concept than the soul.
From Wikipedia:
The soul, in several philosophical movements and many religious traditions, is the core essence of a being. In some traditions it is considered immortal; in others it is considered to be mortal. In most religions, and some philosophical movements, a soul is strongly connected with notions of the afterlife , but opinions vary wildly even within a given religion as to what happens to the soul after death . Many within these religions and philosophies believe the soul is immaterial, while others feel it may indeed be material.
As seen in BtVS/AtS, a soul cannot be sensed by a human when in place. It's invisible, except when out of body, summoned by magic. It can be extracted, held in a jar like the gas which creates neon signs. Some demons can detect its presence. Its effects, when installed, are variable - as the time-shifting demon Sahjahn points out in the AtS Season 3 episode "Lullaby," Attila the Hun had one. A soul is no guarantee of good, but without one, a being cannot help but be evil... or so we're told.
A soul was is what separates Angel from Angelus. Without a soul, Angelus has "no humanity in him." (BtVS Season 2, "The Judge.") With a soul, Angel feels remorse for his century of bad deeds. The philospher Descartes (1596-1650) singled out the presence of a (human) soul as justification for man's supremacy over animals, which were not believed to have one - a philosophy which was later used as a justification for the moral okayness of animal testing. This theory would have made Descartes quite buddy-buddy with members of The Initiative, and also Buffy herself on frequent occasion - humans are considered superior by default to demons in BtVS/AtS because they possess "souls."
But to get into the inherent contradictions of the soul and how it's presented in the series would be nigh-unto pointless - soulless Spike (and to a lesser extent, soulless Harmony) regularly displays far more empathy and affection than he should reasonably be capable of, given the definition of the soul as exemplified by Angel: with soul, good, without, "no humanity in him." Soullessness is not a guarantee of automatic bad choices anymore than soulfulness is a guarantee of automatic good ones. The key difference seems to be a concept of weighing options and thinking about the consequences. Which again brings us back to the idea of judgment, and the afterlife.
In Angel, we are treated to a flashback of Angel's re-ensouling through Darla's eyes. She confronts one of the gypsies responsible for this.
From Angel Season 2, "Darla":
You took him from me. You stole him away.
You gave him a soul.
GYPSY
He must suffer - as all of his victims have suffered.
DARLA
That is no justice.
Whatever pain he caused to your daughter was momentary - over in an instant - or an hour.
But what you've done to him will force him to suffer for the rest of eternity!
Remove that filthy soul so my boy might return to me.
It isn't just the pain of Angel's guilt that Darla seems to be implying here. Her words seem to suggest that a soul makes Angel responsible for what he's done, opening him up to eternal judgment and damnation. By extension, this would also seem to imply that there is no afterlife for the common dusted vampire, something akin to there being no doggy heaven, dogs not generally being concerned with moral issues of right or wrong. Those without souls have no guilt.
Angel's nemesis, the vampire hunter Holtz, seems to agree with this theory, when he's told that Angel has a soul.
From Angel Season 3, "Lullaby":
That's what this is about, right?
You find out Angel has a soul,
now you're wondering if things are a little murkier - ethically speaking.
HOLTZ
Things - have never been clearer.
Releasing his soul to suffer for all eternity only makes his destruction more just, more fitting.
So then, does having a soul mean that the evil are damned to suffer eternally because some outside force has judged them wanting? Or because their own consciences have created their own "hell"? Given the evidence of the series, either profile would seem to fit. But as pointed out earlier in this essay, taking one's cues from higher powers is generally considered to be a bad thing.
What the soul ultimately appears to be about is personal responsibility.
Salvation and Damnation
It's actually in the histories of vampire characters like Angel that contain the most clues to the shows' actual take on religious thought. Over and over in the Angel series, we see redemption being referred to in a more or less secular sense, as working off a debt, repaying society for harms done. And in contrast to this, nearly all of the major vampires' stories - Angel, Darla, Spike, Drusilla - contain little parables about the cause and effects of religious belief, of virtue or sin. Given the age of the characters in question - Spike, the youngest, is over a century old, while Darla, the oldest, tops four centuries - Christianity is the default setting for their human beliefs. And over and over, we see ideas of predestination warring with what seems to be the series' most pointed driving message - that to be human, one needs to exercise the power of choice.
Darla's origin is that of a sinner who expects little from God. It starts in 1609, on her human deathbed, as she refuses the services of a priest.
From Angel Season 2, "Darla":
Are you prepared now to renounce Satan and beg God his forgiveness?
DARLA
God never did anything for me.
PRIEST
(to the others)
Leave us. (The two sisters leave.)
PRIEST
(to the doctor still sitting at her bedside)
You can't save her life - perhaps I can still save her soul.
(The doctor gets up and leaves.)
DARLA
My soul is well past saving.
Let the devil take me if he'll have me. Either way - I die.
Darla gets what she asked for - the devil does take her. The Master turns her into a vampire, and she spends the next four hundred years revelling in her lack of conscience. Yet in Angel Season 3, after being brought back to life as a human, then revamped, still with no thought toward personal redemption, she sacrifices her own life for her unborn child. Then, in Season 4, we see her make a spectral appearance, begging her son to not go down the same path of evil she herself took. By all appearances, and although she never went looking for redemption, Darla would seem to have been redeemed. Her personal choices, not predestination, have led her to a state of grace.
On the other hand, we have Drusilla, a devout Christian as a human who encounters Angelus hiding in a confessional.
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2, "Becoming Part 1":
Me mum says... I'm cursed. (exhales)
My seeing things is an affront to the Lord, (inhales sharply)
that only he's supposed to see anything before it happens. (inhales, sobs)
But I don't mean to, Father, I swear! (inhales) I swear!
(begins to cry) I try to be pure in his sight.
(sobs) I don't want to be an evil thing.
ANGELUS
Oh, hush, child.
The Lord has a plan for all creatures.
Even a Devil child like you.
DRUSILLA
(taken aback) A Devil?
ANGELUS
Yes! You're a spawn of Satan.
All the Hail Marys in the world aren't going to help.
The Lord will use you and smite you down.
He's like that.
DRUSILLA
(frightened) What can I do?
ANGELUS
Fulfill his plan, child. Be evil. Just give in.
DRUSILLA
No! (sobs) I want to be good.
(sobs) I want to be pure.
ANGELUS
We all do, at first. The world doesn't work that way.
Angelus's words, in the context of the series, are proved to be exactly right. Evil does triumph. Purity is defiled. Neither Drusilla's ability to see the future nor taking holy orders to become a nun can save her. Angelus kills her family, drives her insane, and then makes her into a vampire, and Drusilla never returns to be being "good" or "pure." She embodies the classic caricature of a Catholic girl gone wrong, the virgin turned wanton - an image also summoned by Darla in her initial BtVS Season 1 appearances, dressed in Britney Spears-esque Catholic schoolgirl costume. For Drusilla, there is no salvation, no matter how desperately she once wanted it. Drusilla is a victim of predestination.
The tales of the male characters, Angel and Spike, are like distorted mirror images of those of Darla and Drusilla, with similar messages. Like Darla, Angel was a sinner as a human - a drunkard, a womanizer, and a terrible disappointment to his father. He seemed to have not spent a great deal of his time as a human thinking about virtue.
As a vampire, though, Angelus spent quite a bit of time thinking about it. Angelus became an overachiever of evil, reveling in the doing of Very Bad Things under Darla's tutlelage.
Spike, on the other hand, seems to have been, if not devout, a rather typically God-fearing Christian as a human - a self-defined "good man." As a vampire, he seems to have not given the relative evil of his deeds much conscious thought.
This key difference between the two characters is best shown in the AtS Season 5 episode "Damage." Spike admits that, "For a demon... I never did think that much about the nature of evil. No. Just threw myself in. Thought it was a party. I liked the rush. I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the victims." Angel expresses exactly the opposite view of his demonic self: "I was only in it for the evil. It was everything to me. It was art. The destruction of a human being."
This difference also translates to both characters after the return of their respective souls. Angel, who did not ask for his soul's return, but was instead cursed with it with the purpose of making him suffer, did not embark on his path of redemption immediately - just as his human existence was originally purposeless, the re-ensouled Angel drifted aimlessly for years until higher powers intervened, sending him to help Buffy. Previous to this, he'd even tried to return to Darla and his old vampiric ways, only find himself unable to perform up to her standards with his new conscience in place (AtS Season 2, "Darla").
Spike, on the other hand, regained his soul on purpose, and returned immediately to Buffy in hopes of being of "use" to her. Although he states clearly that his return doesn't indicate a desire to "atone," he dramatically drapes himself over a cross in a church in a self-punishing act that would seem to be a fairly clear plea for forgiveness, both from Buffy and from God (BtVS Season 7, "Beneath You").
The key difference here would seem to be purpose - both Angel and Spike needed a clear sense of purpose to begin them on the path toward redemption.
Which brings us, finally, to the Shanshu prophecy.
Just Rewards
The Shanshu prophecy is introduced at the tail end of Angel Season 1 ("To Shanshu in LA") as a goal for which Angel must reach - if Angel gains his redemption, says the prophecy (in crude sum-up), he will win back his humanity, having been judged by some higher authority to have been found worthy. In AtS Season 5, we see Angel's hallucinatory vision of what this might look like, filtered through his own uncomfortable suspicions that Spike might be more worthy of the Shanshu prize than him. (Remember that this is Angel's dream - picture Angel speaking Spike's lines instead for best effect.)
From Angel Season 5, "Soul Purpose":
(smiling modestly)
Well, this is, uh... Thank you, everyone.
Um... I don't know what to say.
(laughter all around)
I'm just a... working-class bloke fulfilling his destiny.
It was nothing, really.
Angel can be seen in the background looking all meek, contrasting sharply against the confident demeanor of Spike right now.
FRED
Nothing? Spike, you single-handedly ended Armageddon
and turned the world into a beautiful, happily-ever-after,
candy mountain place where all our dreams come true.
(gestures toward the window)
The others behind Fred follow suit with a cascading gesture toward the window. Outside, downtown Los Angeles is depicted as a fairytale castle with blue skies and green hills and bright sunshine.
SPIKE
Beautiful, isn't it?
GUNN
The living end. And now... it's time for your reward.
WESLEY
Yes.
(points at Spike enthusiastically)
Your reward!
SPIKE
But I didn't do this for a reward.
GUNN
Well, that's why you're getting one.
Crowd oohs and ahhs as a blue fairy floats into the room toward Spike.
WESLEY
After all, anyone who saves the universe from eternal bloodshed, horror,
and misery deserves to get what they've always wanted.
FRED
Deserves to become a real boy.
Now, what was that again about judgment by higher powers?
Judgment, judgment, judgment... it comes up again and again. We see Angel fight for Darla's life in AtS Season 2 in an episode named "The Trial," and Spike fight for to get his soul back in BtVS Season 6 in "Two to Go" and "Grave" by enduring - you guessed it - "trials."
Ultimately, in both BtVS and AtS, judgment of a higher power is not the point. Free will is, and the desire to use one's power to change the world for the better. This message is rather severely muddied in the waters of both series' finales, thanks to a number of last-minute plot introductions that would seem to directly contradict this idea (magically appearing amulets and axes, deus ex machina spells, divine visions from The Powers That Be), but just as the Christian symbology is there on a buffet-style basis for us to pick and choose through, we're meant to gloss over that part, focus on the actions of the main characters. Angel decides, finally, that a reward is not the point, something he pretty clearly knew all along ("But I didn't do this for a reward / that's why you're getting one"). The Shanshu was a distraction. When it comes into conflict with what Angel truly wants to accomplish - the destruction of the Senior Partners' most power agents on Earth - he promptly signs it away. Angel's not doing this for a reward. Neither was Darla. And by the end, neither was Spike.
If there is a hell or heaven, BtVs and AtS seem to say, we make it ourselves... metaphorically speaking. Religion is no sanctuary - nuns are vampire candy, monks cower and cringe. Goodness untested by evil proves nothing. It's only through trying to make the world better for others, not ourselves, that we earn our souls' final reward. And one's own conscience is the real final judge. And just as Angel loses his soul through a moment of "perfect happiness," we must never really believe we deserve a reward.
But... depending on which passages of the Bible one reads, who's to say if this philosophy is non-Christian? In many ways it's exactly on target with the Christian message - selflessly helping one's fellow humans. In other ways, it goes directly against it, but elevating the self as the ultimate arbiter, in defiance to any kind of holy judgment of God. At best, it's a catch as catch-can view of Christianity cum humanism, where Jesus had some good ideas, but picking through them like Bartlett's quotations is a totally okay plan.
From Angel Season 4, "Deep Down":
What you did to me - was unbelievable, Connor.
But then I got stuck in a hell dimension by my girlfriend one time for a hundred years,
so three months under the ocean actually gave me perspective.
Kind of a M. C. Esher perspective--but I did get time to think.
About us, about the world.
Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel.
But that's why there's us. Champions.
It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference.
We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.
You're not a part of that yet. I hope you will be.
(Angel moves to stand in front of Connor) I love you, Connor.
(Quietly, after a beat) Now get out of my house.
What would a viewer who was not raised Christian make of all this? I'm really not sure.
*all script quotations and transcripts from BuffyWorld.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-01 05:44 pm (UTC)If there is a hell or heaven, BtVs and AtS seem to say, we make it ourselves... metaphorically speaking. Religion is no sanctuary - nuns are vampire candy, monks cower and cringe. Goodness untested by evil proves nothing. It's only through trying to make the world better for others, not ourselves, that we earn our souls' final reward. And one's own conscience is the real final judge. And just as Angel loses his soul through a moment of "perfect happiness," we must never really believe we deserve a reward.
I think this passage, especially, puts the often confusing theology of BtVS and Ats into a workable persepctive.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-01 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-01 06:40 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-01 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-01 07:48 pm (UTC)If there is a hell or heaven, BtVs and AtS seem to say, we make it ourselves... metaphorically speaking.... It's only through trying to make the world better for others, not ourselves, that we earn our souls' final reward. And one's own conscience is the real final judge.
Amen, sister.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-01 10:20 pm (UTC)I was raised Catholic myself, so I likewise feel a bit sensitive about the idea of being told what is or is not okay to believe... although that said, I was always kind of annoyed by how the BtVS characters in particular never seemed to give any of this stuff any real thought. It made them come off as careless about morality more often than not, hardly a good position to claim spiritual superiority from.
And I so owe you comments on your Angel and Spike essay! I loved that - I think you originally posted it when I had my major laptop crash. But more on this tomorrow.... : )
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 01:06 am (UTC)``This, finally, is the inherent contradiction to the BtVS/AtS universe: given the knowledge that gods are real, that talismans and incantations meant to appeal to them are indeed completely effective, living a high-risk lifestyle which might seen them delivered up into whatever afterlife judgment awaits them at any moment... why is it that none of the characters seem to have much of an opinion about religious beliefs? There are virtually no debates anywhere in either series about belief systems or talk of spirituality. It's not until characters actually up and die that such topics even begin to come up... and even then, the level of discussion is left puzzlingly open.''
All I can say to that is Hallelujah, and Amen! And the answer is because the writers are good liberal atheists who don't know diddly-squat about the subject and therefore are on very shaky ground going anywhere near it. And therefore they have no idea what they really mean.
Sorry to be a bore and quote myself, but do you remember a very long discussion in
``It really annoys me that Joss denies religion yet is extraordinarily happy to take on and use the potency of religion's concepts, symbols, emotional baggage and melodrama.
Yes, it is part of his cultural heritage. And of course anyone can wear a cross round their neck and be as god-less as all get out. But to create and write a show that is absolutely riddled with religious imagery -- it's everywhere -- and religious concepts, and then to deny those things have any meaning, while shamelessly using the spiritual power of those images and concepts, seems to me to be slightly hypocritical, or disingenuous. And a lot of religious imagery is metaphorical anyway. If, in Joss's mind, religion has no power or meaning, why would all the religious symbolism be even worth using in his show? It strikes me that if you are writing a show about such big moral/religious concepts as good and evil and redemption and atonement, that at least some spiritual awareness and thought should have gone into it. WHen the New York Times asked Joss what a soul meant, in terms of his shows, since it meant one thing for Angel, and yet SPike seemed to be trying to be good without one, Joss's reply was that the soul was whatever the plot needed it to be at any point in time. This may be fine for casual watchers of the show, but for those looking for any moral consistency in the treatment of characters, his fairly cavalier attitude on these matters speaks for itself.''
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 10:57 am (UTC)If, in Joss's mind, religion has no power or meaning, why would all the religious symbolism be even worth using in his show?
That's the question that kept nagging at me, while writing this - why use it? Blade is a story about killing vampires that doesn't use it - it just comes right out and says "forget what you've seen in the movies; crosses and holy water don't work." There's plenty of examples of vampire stories that have been done this way - I don't remember religious items coming up in a lot of modern vampire stories, actually, so why this one? And the answer I kept getting from looking at the show was that because then we get to use all this cool imagey for razzle-dazzle and borrowed resonance while making fun of how stupid religion is at the same time.
t strikes me that if you are writing a show about such big moral/religious concepts as good and evil and redemption and atonement, that at least some spiritual awareness and thought should have gone into it.
Amen to that. This essay was the most even-handed treatment I could manage without starting to froth about how slippery the series got in its final years about definitions of good and evil - at the end of the day, good and evil weren't so much defined by actions as by the labels the "good" characters cared to slap on them. Funnily enough, that kind of thinking does nothing to separate Joss's aethist worldview from that of the kind of repressive Christianity he seems to look down on. It's rather like that truism about those who don't their history are doomed to repeat it; Joss, by not knowing a damn thing about religion, managed to replicate many of its own historical contradictions in his critique of it. There's very little in his philisophy as carried out in the show to separate him from John Calvin.
And that soul quote always drove me insane. Um, something so crucial that it's used as the justification for whether or not a character can be killed in all good conscience, and this we don't bother to define? Again, if you believe the soul is hokum, that there's no such thing, why not make that part of the point of the series? Why keep upholding it as real?
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 01:21 am (UTC)One of the things that struck me reading your essay is that one of the few images that is taken "seriously", as it were, is crucifixion. As you point out, we get characters in a cruciform pose on several occasions, and it really does seem to be linked with the idea of sacrifice (though probably not in Restless, where it's in a context of playing about with iconic poses. The Gift and Beneath You, though, are clearly meant as allusions to sacrifice, as is NLM). And via a bit of a tangent that got me thinking about that fight Spike and Angel have in Destiny where Spike whacks Angel with a great big cross. That, I think, is one of the rare occasions where the Christian symbolism isn't empty but actually adds a layer of comment. On the one level, of course, it's a visual confirmation of Angel's theory that Spike *wants* victory more than Angel, because he can hold on to that cross for longer, even while his own hands are sizzling, just as Angel's did (that links back to their original competition when they first meet, of course, with both of them holding their hands into sunlight to see who can endure the burning longest). But it's also a comment on the fact that what they are competing for is the right to sacrifice themselves - drinking from the Cup of Perpetual Torment buys the winner the right to suffer on behalf of Good - and having Spike wallop Angel with a big cross is a wonderfully sly way of pointing up the absurdity of that fight.
I also particularly liked your observation that coding the bad guys as "demons" and the places they come from as hell dimensions sidesteps all that bothersome business of determing whether they really are evil or just Other. As you say, looked at closely they seem a lot more like sci fi aliens than traditional Christian demons, but if they'd been labelled as that, it would have muddied the moral waters.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 12:20 pm (UTC)Oh, yes. I could have gone on quite a bit more about that - I'd particularly glossed over "Destiny," but thankfully you've already covered that one for me. I just didn't want to get sidetracked into something that might have been interpreted as Angel vs. Spike. ; ) But it is in the absurdity of their fight that you get closest to the series' attitude on religion in general, which is basically that it's silly... which is terribly odd in itself, since all that stuff objectively does work in the context of the show, and that Angel's "big brass testes" in the final episode seem to be proven out by his ability to be a bigger martyr than anyone else. (Cup of Perpetual Torment indeed!) Both shows are very serious about selfless sacrifice equalling heroism, which means that any hero is going to end up a martyr at the of the day, which pretty much puts us right into Passion of the Christ land. Heroes are all about the suffering and the dying. (That's also, incidentally, why I included that closing quote, in which Angel claims that it doesn't even matter if Champions "make a difference." Say wha-?)
I also particularly liked your observation that coding the bad guys as "demons" and the places they come from as hell dimensions sidesteps all that bothersome business of determing whether they really are evil or just Other.
Yep, that would require actually having to think about what constitutes good or evil. Bad reveals itself eventually, says the series, and good just has to sit back and say "See! I told you so!" When you've got handy items around like souls and demon horns to identify bad guys, who needs a conscience?
Er, except for the guys with demon horns who aren't bad. Um...
(no subject)
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 02:06 am (UTC)Angel's intent is to martyr himself for the greater good of humanity, like Jesus, but Wes is not an analog for the disciple who denied Jesus three times, Peter, the "rock" upon which the Christian church was built.
I think the "betrayal" line is actually a reference to Judas -and Wes does "betray" Angel in the sense that he gains access to Vail's private rooms by pretending that he's come there to sell Angel out. Since Spike isn't allowed to be Judas, he asks for the role of Peter instead. I don't honestly think there's more to it than the joke that Spike is still pretending he hasn't got Angel's back, even though we all know he's firmly in the loyal sidekick role. Just a bit of banter before battle.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 02:35 am (UTC)Initial reactions:
On apocalypses - the major division between the Jossverse characters concept of the Apocalypse and the Christian one is that in Christian literature the Apocalypse is predestined to end in God's victory and hence essentially a good thing, regardless of the temporary suffering it causes. The key difference in the Jossverse is that victory for the forces of good is not guaranteed, so these are not so much Apocalypses with less weight of meaning, as apocalypses which have been averted. Once again, it's a valuing of human life over abstract theological imperatives.
On explicit Christians in the Jossverse, you forgot the very competent and respect-worthy nun in I've Got You Under My Skin, possibly the Jossverse episode which accepts Christian (and specifically Catholic) concepts least critically.
On Pavayne, the theory which I've seen most often and which makes most sense to me is that he, and he only, was consigned to a Hell dimension by Wolfram & Hart as a specific part of the sacrifice, and as a payment for their mystical power. He then sent other people to Hell to trade his way out, in the process probably buying even more power for W&H (one wonders if they forsaw it). It goes with the imagery of buying and trading souls that is applied to W&H all the way through. In general, there are serious problems with an explicit endoresement of Hell in the Jossverse, because it means that any huiman characters killed off by our heroes in a state of moral ambiguity may have been consigned to eternal torment, a really big moral responsibility. I'm not surprised they skated around the subject.
Finally, I would specifically bring in the way that Jasmine's cannibalism is presented as a parody of Holy Communion - the God consuming her worshippers and making them part of her Body in a far less spiritual and pleasant way than the binding of the Church into the body of Christ.
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Date: 2005-01-02 03:27 pm (UTC)Which is kind of getting to the heart of my original point - that the Jossverse "apocalypse" is not an apocalypse at all. The term is being deployed with a certain amount of total ignorance as to what it actually means, in a sort of TV news style (I've seen the SE Asian quake referred that way), "this is like an image of the end of the world". But as per a story of ultimate good and evil, ME's definition of "apocalypse" pretty much had nothing to do with what the term actually means. Kind of like calling an axe a "scythe." ; )
Once again, it's a valuing of human life over abstract theological imperatives.
I'd agree this is the ultimate point the story was driving for, but sometimes the actions of the characters makes this a bit hard to suss. For example, it seemed to me, in "Chosen," if protecting human life were the real goal here, then the army of Slayers would have been armed with guns. Just sayin.'
On explicit Christians in the Jossverse, you forgot the very competent and respect-worthy nun in I've Got You Under My Skin, possibly the Jossverse episode which accepts Christian (and specifically Catholic) concepts least critically.
Oh, right, the nun! Actually, that's another good example of exactly what I was talking about - here's a nun, who knows just by looking at Angel that he's a vampire, and objectively speaking is representing a God whose tools and icons are completely effective, and yet it's just thrown in there like any other mystical item. That same episode makes fun of the wife's belief in angels and gets a lot of comedy value out of the demon-trapping box made by "blind Tibetean monks." On the surface of things, you have to wonder why no one takes the stuff more seriously. I mean, maybe that nun's onto something, you know?
I'm not surprised they skated around the subject.
Me either. You could get any number of theories about Pavayne, but just like the heaven thing, hell is a shrug-who-knows kind of conclusion.
Finally, I would specifically bring in the way that Jasmine's cannibalism is presented as a parody of Holy Communion - the God consuming her worshippers and making them part of her Body in a far less spiritual and pleasant way than the binding of the Church into the body of Christ.
Heh! Although that is a complete reversal of actual communion, which is taking part of the God's body, making it part of you. I'd call Jasmine's eating people a rather more typical sacrifice model, like throwing your babies into the fires of Baal.
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Date: 2005-01-02 04:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 03:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-02 11:23 am (UTC)Anyways, yes, a great piece. I particularly admire your generosity - I think if I'd set out to do something in this vein it would have ended up as an extended, sputtering rant along the lines of "Apocalypse is just Greek for Revelation, dumbasses! Why would the bad guys be trying to bring about a divine revelation? Why would the good guys be trying to stop them? Don't you think the term you're looking for is Armageddon, or I dunno, The End Of The World? Here's twenty bucks! Buy yourselves a frickin' dictionary! Aaaaargh!"
And then my head would explode. So it's good I didn't do that.
One thing that occurs to me in reading this is that, although every major precept of Christianity is objectively true in the Buffyverse - people have immortal souls which go to heaven and/or hell when they die, demons walk the Earth corrupting humanity, crosses and holy water repel the minions of evil - the only characters who actually seem to be "super religious" are vampires. Compared to the resolutely agnostic humans, the vamps seem a cowardly and superstitious lot indeed, what with all their black masses and bloody communions and obsessive crucifixations...
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Date: 2005-01-02 03:41 pm (UTC)I'm right with you there. I'd add "Anne" too, and your wonderful Evil Hand episode, among others. : )
Here's twenty bucks! Buy yourselves a frickin' dictionary!
Hee! Well, you come from that school of art that suggests you actually learn anatomy before you try to get all progressive on it like Pablo Picasso. Not that you can't just start throwing paint on a canvas, but your odds of doing something slightly less haphazard do increase if you have an idea what the real thing looks like.
the only characters who actually seem to be "super religious" are vampires.
Well, they do seem to have more reason to be, since God actually makes a statement about their existence. Humans, we're not even sure based on this evidence whether anyone cares!
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Date: 2005-01-02 12:59 pm (UTC)there is a heaven of sorts. Whether it's a reward for Buffy's virtuous life of duty and selfless sacrifice, the default destination of all humans, or just another dimension, we're not so sure.
Interesting. I believe that in Normal Again we were basically told that Buffy's "heaven" was a mental ward in another dimension. It was never stated unequivocally but doctor's phrase "Last summer, when you had a momentary awakening, it was them that pulled you back in" was pretty obvious.
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Date: 2005-01-02 02:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-01-02 03:43 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that the insane asylum was meant to be our real take on what actually happened to Buffy, but what an interesting idea... that when she was "warm and loved," she was actually just flying on mood altering drugs...! Hee.
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Date: 2005-01-03 12:11 pm (UTC)I was glad that you went some way to explaining the use of religious iconography on vampires as repellents; as we're told endlessly that demons (vampires) existed before men, I always wondered how vampires would have been fought off in pre-Christian times - with Poseidon's trident or a stone figure of a female deity? Hmmm.
The bit with Buffy and the nuns in S4 always struck me as quite anachronistic to the story; particularly because her supposed one true love (er, that would be Angel) preferred nuns above others as his choice of victims. Seemed almost to kitschy.
Buffy in heaven - didn't Anya mention that there were many heavenly dimensions? Why does she as a demon know about heavenly dimensions?
All gods are created equal here - they are merely powerful beings, hardly omnipotent or unknowable.
I'm not sure if you might have wanted to mention Illyria here - after all he/she was a God King?
Er, I read your essay in conjunction with a piece by Michel Foucault on various things including religion, culture and power and was struck by his idea of the pastor/pasteur, and how Buffy came to represent this somewhat during S7 particularly in the way she behaved with the potentials. (I know your feelings on S7 so I won't go too far in, merely just to give two tiny quotes from MF):
"One seeks salvation for oneself, certainly, but one can do this only if one accepts the authority of another."
and
"In Christianity the absolute honour is precisely to be obedient."
Seemed to resonate in some conjunction with all the things you mentioned.
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Date: 2005-01-03 12:36 pm (UTC)Alternatively, since Buffy and Angel never show any non-Christian objects working on vampires, and since holy water seems to work at least a little against the Ubervamp - a member of a species which has supposedly been exiled from Earth for untold millennia - it may well be that only Christian icons are effective against vampires, regardless of their upbringing.
Actually, the very fact that holy water works at all supports this theory, since unlike a cross the vampire has no reason to suspect there's anything special about the water itself. And for all Adam's coaching, do we actually see the vampires who break into the church manhandling crucifixes and chowing down on communion wafers? (Seriously, I don't remember. But if not, then maybe it's not just psychological after all.)
Given all this evidence, the rules of the Buffyverse may well provide tangible proof of the validity of Christianity, in the face of which it would almost be an act of faith to refuse to believe in Jesus. :-)
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Date: 2005-01-03 02:14 pm (UTC)I think Illyria can be seen as a fairly typical god figure by the show's standards - arrogant and wanting worship, largely unconcerned with the welfare of said worshippers. Her extended rants on leadership in "Time Bomb" and points forward would really put her in line with just-powerful-beings reading - she's trying to impose her will on the world, but not manipulating its clockwork in a "god works in mysterious ways" kind of thing, of a sort in which human beings are supposed to sit back and regard with awe.
Which is why I also can't get so much into the idea that BtVS or AtS supports the aspect of Christian though that implies obedience. So much of the series is spent sneering at authority figures - even Illyria is powered down in order to play nice with the rest of the gang in fashion you get the feeling Angel would have liked to talk Jasmine into, if he could have.
"One seeks salvation for oneself, certainly, but one can do this only if one accepts the authority of another."
I can see this working for Spike - and there's that martyr model again - but Buffy? Her final act was to spit in the eye of authority, make up her own rules. That, to me, seemed to be the ultimate message of the franchise, likewise Angel's "we'll show them!" show of force against the Senior Partners. Ultimately, it seems you're there to prove that no god or whatever is the boss of you. It's kind of like adolescent rebellion writ very large.
Of course, then you get the inherent contradiction that this kind of empowerment only works for her, and not so much those she leads, so... well, like I said, the pick and choose buffet.
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Date: 2005-01-05 03:21 am (UTC)I think to begin with, demon=evil. As simple as that. Angel was the exception because he had a soul. But as the series went on, it all got a lot murkier - especially because of places like Willy's. It was obviously doing good business, and Buffy never closed it down. On AtS of course, the lines were blurry from the start. Take the episode where Merl is killed - we have no evidence that he was good, only that he wasn't particularly evil. And Wes takes on his case without thinking. We knew him - someone killed him - we find out who!
Of course on Buffy we have Spike - Spike who contradicts everything! Spike who was able to love selflessly and feel remorse with out a soul - who went and got one all by himself.
And someone mentioned Clem - I adore that scene in 'Potential' where Spike and Buffy take all the wanna-be's to Willy's and Buffy is warning them against the evil demons - just before she turns round and gives Clem a big hug!
I think one of the best messages of the Joss verse is that life isn't black and white. Good people can do bad things (::looks at Scoobies in s6::) - souled beings can be worse than demons (Warren). It's all about choices.
Now about christianity (writing as a catholic!) I think that people tend to think of it as 'follow these rules and you'll get into heaven', which is really missing the point! Here I am deeply indebted to C.S.Lewis for writing so beautifully and clearly. That whole catholic guilt thing - doesn't exist! Shouldn't anyway, cause it's wrong. The whole point of christianity is that the debt is already paid! All you have to do is accept that.
And that's one of the things that always used to depress me about BtVS and AtS - that Spike and Angel had to 'work off' their debt. There is an episode is s2 - where Angel is not working with the others and Lorne asks him to help (some scientist's going to end the world/stop time), and Angel says something like "150 years of murder, how am I ever going to make up for that?" And he's very defeated in 'Hellbound' thinking he's going to go to hell no matter what. And you've actually managed to make me look at that differently, so I'm very happy! Thank you! That choice matters more than predestination is something I'll happily live with.
Going back to what I said earlier - christianity is not about following rules - it's about what choices you make. The rules are guide lines (Lewis calls the ten commandments 'instructions for running the human machine!) Because every choice will take you in one direction or the other. And over the course of a lifetime, many, many bad choices might leave you unable to trust and love. One seriously bad choice might make you stop and think and reconsider. Which is why sometimes 'thought-crimes' can be a lot more damaging that say hurting someone in a fit of rage. What matters is the impact the choice has on you.
And to my mind, this is why the AR is not an obstacle in my love of Spike - if on the other hand he had never touched Buffy but had spent hours fantasising about torturing her and getting pleasure out of it... much, much worse. I don't think he could have come back from that.
It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference.
What matters is the mindset! The choice! And that is incredibly christian as you pointed out.
Must go now, really! Might come back later for some more structured thoughts, not just to let my mind run away with me. I hope you didn't mind too much?
Gah! Just did the spell check and saw how long it is... sorry!
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Date: 2005-01-05 11:24 am (UTC)In CWDP Holden asks Buffy if God exists, and she shrugs and answers something non-committal. It would seem by 'God' they refer to the christian God rather than TPTB, which are not a matter of faith (Angel talks to them) and have nothing to do with Christianity. I found that intriguing!
Re. the 'you get the reward because you don't want it' and all the 'it doesn't matter if we make a difference': I was reminded of Abraham sacrificing Isaac - it's the intention that matters, not the deed.
What else - Jasmine saying 'There is no good and evil, only choices' is such an incredible mass of contradictions, that I want to slap her! If there is no right or wrong, then what can you choose between? Sorry, pet hate!
Grr, now I've forgotten what else I was going to write! And I also have to go and get the children out of the bath, so if I ever remember what it was, I'll probably comment again tomorrow! (Heh! Interesting essay = many thoughts)
Oh, and I'll probably do a bit of pimping as well! :)
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