...finding faith
The McFlurry of Archetypal Anomalies
by Laota French
So, come t'learn about Faith, have ye? Oh, a long and aurduous journey it be, full o' hazards and grammatical errors.... Sorry. I promise, that's the last time I'll ever do my wizened pirate voice; I'll just go straight into essay.
To understand Faith, you first have to understand her place on BtVS, which was, at first, limited by her role in a universe that revolved around Buffy Summers. When she first arrived in "Faith, Hope, and Trick," it was as more of a mirror or crystal ball than a person, showing Buffy what she might've been, and might still become, like Willow's vampy counterpart in "Doppelgängland". Faith's "feel good, think less" mentality embodied all the temptations that Buffy was burned by toying with the year before:
In "When She Was Bad," Buffy's denial of her issues -- particularly her haunting fear of dying at the hands of The Master -- brought out her inner soap opra bitch, pushing away her friends and family, even Angel, ultimately putting them all in danger with the possibility of The Master's return.
In "Reptile Boy," Buffy got tired of being mature. She told one lie, had one drink, and almost got eaten by a giant phallic frat snake.
When Buffy began to hate her mother's new beau in "Ted," she was snuck out of the house in spite of being sent to her room, and spent her agression by "livin' large" on vampires. Her un satiated anger lead to her using slayer strength on a man she thought was merely human, for nothing more than personal vengeance, and to the point where any real human would've been killed. This led to a short-lived taste of what Buffy might come to expect from the tyrannical abuse of her powers or a fascistic outlook on her place in society.
In "Innocence," Buffy acted on Want in a moment of blind passion and lost her eponymic innocence and her lover, not to mention unleashed a twisted killer on her friends and family. To act on Want can be bad.
And at the end of "Becoming: Part Two", Buffy couldn't deal with her problems, or even the thought of sharing them with her friends and mother, who she left to twist in the wind, along with the fate of Sunnydale. She eventually learned that flouting her responsibility, keeping her pain to herself, and packing "like a son of a bitch" when things got real was a stupid, inconsiderate mistake.
All of Buffy's affection for -- and loyalty to -- Faith was based on the fears that, as a fellow "big, loner hero," she herself might become like Faith, and still had the potential of going too far to come back: if Faith could be redeemed, so could Buffy. You might compare Buffy's relationship to Faith with Angel and Darla's-Actually, Faith was more like the Smeagol to Buffy's Frodo. (That's right, I'm a geek, your approval is neither required, nor desired!) Buffy took her friends' insistence that Faith might not be worth the trouble of saving as a personal insult and always compared Faith's struggle to her own. It wasn't until Big Sister's wake of caos stirred up thoughts of Angel fidelity that Buffy finally threw Faith off the love train, thus removing her from the not-so-carved-in-stone list of Buffy's allies and relegating her to a nemesis. And Buffy's hero journey kissed Faith goodbye. Which begs the question: What happened to Faith's journey? Faith's not as specific an archetype as the other scoobies. She's not a mentor or sidekick, she has no boons, no wisdom or weapons to pass onto Buffy, and seemingly nothing to offer; her power wasn't even unique to the dynamic. She failed dismally as a villain, and didn't fair much better as a hermit. And as a hero, her track record sort of spoke for itself. So was that all Faith was, a shadow of the "real" slayer? A morality tale; an extra wheel? Well, I submit that Faith did get her hero's journey. We just never got to see it happen.
Faith's journey started before her arrival in Sunnydale, when Kendra died and passed the calling on to her. If you wanted to get anal, it was Faith, and not Buffy, who was the real slayer. But, as the AI gang so often put it, she lost the mission. But not out of rejecting her calling -- as is the case with most lost most heroes -- but by accepting it in the wrong way: alone. Faith can't be blamed for her lack of allies, with her mother and watcher both six feet under, and seemingly not doing much better in the way of god friends, she hardly had the guidance and assistance to hone her powers, let alone face the Big Bad. And not to get nerdy on everyone again, but Faith was a bit of a Han Solo. Knowing fans have called him an anti-hero, or even a shape shifter, given Luke's inability to trust his loyalties, but Han always struck me as more of an older sibling and shadow. By the time he staggered into "Star Wars" with his beat-up Millenium Falcon, Han Solo had been there, done that, and pretty much failed his hero's journey. He'd picked up crap weapons and boons, a surly ally, and many undefeated enemies of his own, one of which, all his friends would eventually have to contend with: Jabba the Hut. If it wasn't for the stringently good influence of Luke and Leia, Han would've went on simmering in his own gravy until Jabba tracked him down again and killed him, or worse, he might've pulled something really nasty to get the cash to keep Jabba off his back. See the geeky resemblance? Jabba = Kikistos?
Anyway, point being: Faith failed her mission, lost her direction, and everything she did afterward was just a naive attempt to reclaim it by latching onto someone else's journey; first Buffy's, then the Mayor's, then Angel's, and then -- surprise -- Buffy's again. Always a wild card, Faith's loyalties usual depend on her circumstances, and the archetypes she has embodied run the spectrum: as protagonist, she's been a comrade in arms, a self-deprecator, even a clown, with the power to make us laugh at her sarcasm, turn of phrase, and lack of intellectual refinement. As a antagonist, she's been a trickster, an imposter, and a foil. As an anti-hero, she's a silent loner, as a lover, she's a task, a brief test of character at best (whether you come away from her bed with having conquested or lost a limb depends on your dexterity). Always reactive, Faith -- like Connor, Angelus, Spike, etc. -- is an important ingredient in the mix, the carbon that makes the soda fizz. Her very presence effortlessly stirs the pot and breaks up the monotony of heroes and their secret baggage, sniffing out imposters and pointing out the elephant in the room, if only out of candor. But she's always been Fortune, the one that rolls the dice and keeps the game interesting, which is why she tends to show up when characters get too happy or hopeless.
It's a big, convoluted grey area that's easy to get turned around in, to confuse her complexity with her simplicity. Zig when you should've zagged. She's hard to pin down, a player that operates outside the system whenever necessary, under the constant threat of Murphy's Laws, ready to roll with the punches, improvise, and get far ahead of her enemies, leaving the other characters to eat her dust. Beside her, the classic, stalwart hero becomes "Agroikos", a comically joyless straight man. She's often the victim of her own folly, but never the reaper of her own rewards. With her stuggle, she teaches by example, either by her mistakes or her courage. While the demons Buffy fights are metaphorical, she still fights them mostly without of herself, while Faith fights hers within, where her most savage monsters give chase and deadly dragons breathe their fire. And this occasionally makes Faith more enagmatic and harder to relate to than Buffy. When we don't see the fight happening in front of us, it's easy not to take it as seriously.
So, what's the best way to define Faith? In a word: vaguely.
