Aaah, I love your essays and this one's a stunner. I've always totally ignored the religious motifs on the grounds that they're just there as a bit of mystical mumbo jumbo, so it was really satisfying to read an essay that takes the time to pick its way through the junk shop and distinguishes between generic vampire story trappings, things that do actually have a function (even if its a pretty empty function, like Willow's Jewishness), and Joss's actual take on religion. Do you already know Naomi Chana's essay on the use of Latin in the Buffyverse, which covers much of the same ground, and reaches some similar conclusions? (But with respect to Latin rather than Christian imagery, obviously).
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.
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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.