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Buffy and Spike
We have an interesting essay about the controversial Buffy / Spike relationship based on a book called "Messages About Sex and Violence in the Buffy/Spike Relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer A Fine Line Between Love and Hate". |
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer": Future is Now
 Heather Fowler's paper "Messages About Sex and Violence in the Buffy/Spike Relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer A Fine Line Between Love and Hate" has been published on AssociatedContent June 01 2006, more than three years after the show ended. Fowler, a romantic fiction novelist, uses TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as prime example to illustrate her point that TV should be more responsible in telling stories about dark and unhealthy relationships. She doesn't insist directly on tightening TV censorship but maintains that controversial scenes may send "mixed messages" to the audience. Fowler writes "In this paper, I deal specifically with the message given by the complicated sadomasochistic relationship between the series' heroine, Buffy Summers, and the wildly popular arch-villain-turned-hero, Spike. [...] I contend that the message of this relationship to young viewers is a dangerous one."
Buffy and Spike are natural enemies. Buffy's mission is to slay vampires, but she ends up falling in love with them; Spike's natural calling is to kill Slayers (he has already killed two of them) but he falls in love with Buffy; their relationship is as dark and complicated as prime-time TV can afford. In later seasons Buffy, torn out of heaven, is "addicted to misery" and she punishes herself by using Spike as sex toy, insulting and beating him. He, in his turn, encourages her dark desires because he has no soul and can't tell right from wrong (in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" soul is regarded as person's moral compass). Buffy and Spike indulge each other in sadomasochistic games where "no" may mean "yes" - until the day when Spike misreads Buffy's signals and tries to impose himself on her when her "no" really means "no". Horrified by his act of attempted rape he fights for his soul so that he could never hurt Buffy again. After many crucibles Buffy forgives him and in the final episode of the show confesses her love to him. The ultimate message of the show is that love overcomes everything, empowers women and helps to change the world.
According to Fowler, Buffy and Spike's story damaged "show's meta-narrative of female empowerment". In her opinion, "the attempted rape scene brought to the forefront some disturbing viewer attitudes toward women, sexual agency, abuse and violence." Fowler uses random quotes from long-defunct message boards as the proof that the relationship between Buffy and Spike undermines viewers' morality. She accuses writers of not dealing with the consequences of attempted rape and implies that genre conventions (Buffy is much stronger than her partner - she's a slayer and a battle-hardened fighter) are unacceptable when writers explore serious issues. Fowler concludes her paper with the statement: "Ours is a world where 80% of rapes are committed by acquaintances of the victim, less than half of those attacks reported to authorities, and in which many teens express a belief that women in certain situations do not have a right to say "no" to sexual activity (Eschbacher, 2002). Therefore, it is more important than ever to examine mixed messages in popular media such as the Buffy/Spike relationship, and understand what they communicate to younger viewers as to what constitutes a healthy romantic and/or sexual relationship. This is especially true in a popular television show whose creators publicly profess themselves and their program to be progressive and feminist, and who are enlightened, educated people with no excuse for not recognizing their influence on, and responsibility toward, young viewers." .......
Darkness and controversy around Buffy and Spike's relationship surpassed that of all the other couples put together. Heroes first met in the beginning of the second season and the chemistry between actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters was so strong that fans immediately started to fantasize about mortal enemies as a couple. In season 4 Whedon made a test: during the course of one episode a runaway spell made Buffy and Spike betrothed. Again, the chemistry was so powerful and explosive that in the next season Whedon started a very intriguing and unpredictable love affair between them - and bumpy ride evolved into an exciting rollercoaster. Devoted fans who always are emotionally ahead of the story, wrote thousands and thousands of fanfics about the couple, discussed the tiniest details of their behavior on multiple message boards, made video-clips and Photoshop manipulations, organized campaigns to support heroes. Other fans, who disliked the couple also were very vocal - they wrote letters to show-runners, to TV bosses, to media outlets to express their dissatisfaction.
 One of show-runners, Marti Noxon later reminisced about the season 6 when Buffy and Spike finally became lovers: "This was the beginning of the most divisive story we’ve ever had, which was Buffy and Spike boning. Really, I’ve never seen such a strong reaction on both sides. People either love it or hate it. To this day, people either truly believe that Spike is completely redeemed and should be treated a lot better, or they truly believe that Buffy is a fool for trusting someone who’s been evil and how can she be so unheroic as to allow herself to be caught up in this really sordid romance? So you get the total Buffy/Spike shippers or you get the attitude, ‘I just don’t respect Buffy any more.’ It’s fascinating to see. The thing I keep saying is that it’s not black and white. I’d love it to be, but it’s not. To me, this is much more real. If these two crazy kids can make it work, it will be a lot more interesting than a kind of perfect romance with obstacles thrown in. To me, this is real life; this is people making their own problems. If they can get it together, that would be amazing. But it was never going to be easy".
And it wasn't. Fans desperately wanted happy ending for Buffy and Spike, but Whedon, true to form, ended their relationship tragically: Spike dies saving the world immediately after Buffy confesses her love to him. Moreover, Whedon not only plunged a knife into fans' hearts, but also twisted it: Spike doesn't believe that Buffy loves him and she doesn't get time to convince him........
It won't be an overstatement to say that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" started a new age in TV history. The show that started in one millennium and concluded its run in the next millennium, became a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow. Three years has already passed after the ending of the show and we are still passionately debating about Buffy and Spike. Obviously there is something about them that continues to fascinate people.
| | [by PinkLady (www.associatedcontent.com) ] [12 comments]
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| The__Slayer | 08.08.06 - 00:51 | | This text is wonderfull,and true..It proves how Spuffy rules,and how amazing Buffy and Spikes relationship was trough the whole show... | | Goddess_Tammy | 08.08.06 - 02:25 | | Spuffy will always be the best to me. It's what made me love the show even more. | | SpuffyFreak | 08.08.06 - 03:55 | Wow! *-* What a beautiful article! I simply adored it; had to save it.
Fowler had such spectacular points of view and her opinions are wonderful. She showed such mesmerizing assertion & points.
I didn't even know about this book "Messages About Sex and Violence in the Buffy/Spike Relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer A Fine Line Between Love and Hate", but I definitely *need* to read it.
Thanks for posting this. ^^ | | rt | 08.08.06 - 10:48 | | Duck's essay was discussing a problem in the story, while this one is grasping to validate a romantic relationship. It doesn't help her cause that she relies on statements that are commonly regarded as false. Most people do not believe Buffy fell in love with Spike. Most people did not want to see them happily ever after. The essay is skirting the original topic, which is that the attempted rape is a serious issue that causes confliction for viewers and is seemingly offbase for a feminist show. By writing this essay it's proven that MW acknowledges the "darkness" of season 6, but was perturbed that someone actually described it as involving abuse, violence and rape, instead of understating it with an edgy one word adjective. | | kxin | 08.08.06 - 18:35 | | I don't think Buffy loved spike? but that's just my opinion.. | | SpuffyFreak | 08.08.06 - 21:13 | @ rt: She does comment on the rape issue as being wrong, and she also said that she show should've done something about it, because Spike didn't even ask for forgiveness, he only changed himself hoping that that way would be just enough for forgiveness; whilst ignoring what he did to Buffy.
And she also said that they were sending wrong messages to the female viewers, as in -- saying it's alright for you to be physically abused and then shut up about it. But she never ignored this fact, she simply didn't talk about it in this article above. You should read some of the pages of this book; we have it around the internet. It's really great! | | SpuffyFreak | 08.08.06 - 21:14 | | *the show | | rt | 08.08.06 - 23:02 | | If she agrees with Ducks then what was the point of writing this? All she's done is declare her love for spuffy. It seems that it should have been posted in a journal or a spuffy board. What was the point of publishing it as an article? | | SpuffyFreak | 09.08.06 - 02:01 | That's basically only a summary of the book. An article. I'm not even quite sure she's such a Spuffy fan herself. She seems to disagree at point of their relationship. And bad-mouth alot about some of the things related to their relationship and especially the bathroom scene.
Still, it's always great to read about Spuffy fans declaring their utter and complete love for this ship. Even you didn't seem to half complain and use your time reading about it. ;-) | | rt | 09.08.06 - 06:09 | | What? It was an article that she was responding to. Everyone knew was a matter of time before some spuffy responded. I found that the article doesn't say anything about the topic. It's just about someone's inane love for spuffy which is why I skipped most of it. | | SpuffyFreak | 09.08.06 - 14:22 | | Ah... now that doesn't yell nescient not even a little bit. *rolleyes* | | TracerRT | 10.08.06 - 11:40 | comment
*sigh*
The person writing this article had little or no idea what they were talking about. If you look at the quote from Noxon - THAT - relates some of the complexity of the Buffy/Spike relationship - which is what made it a great piece of television writing. The whole point is that it isn't describing an ideal relationship. I happen to like Buffy and Spike being paired off and the fact that they had such a turbulent relationship. One of the things I didn't like about the Buffy/Angel relationship was that it was so romantic. Spike was a horrible mistake for Buffy brought on by her being in somewhat desperate circumstances. Riley was her best shot at real happiness - but as the failure of that relationship pointed out - Buffy couldn't be happy. The Slayer, she just couldn't have a relationship with even an only relatively normal guy. Angel tried to do the right thing for Buffy by freeing her to try with a normal guy (even if Angel somewhat understandibly didn't like him). But Spike is who she ended up with. Spike himself was, as a vampire, the same romantically doomed being he had been as William. To say that Buffy's relationship with Spike isn't a good example of the type of relationship young women should pursue is like - Well No Joke!!! The whole reason this was such good television - is that it wasn't "role model" behavior. People have talked about Buffy being a role model but to quote Spike she's more of a "cautionary tale". - Sleep with your boy friend and he'll turn evil. Get intoxicated at a frat party and you'll be fed to a giant snake. Over induge in drugs/magic and you'll become an adict and do evil things. The list goes on and on. There are plenty of shows out there like "Little House on the Prarie", "Touched by an Angel" and "Seventh Heaven" that spend a lot of time trying to show good wholesome heros. Butfy wasn't a good wholesome hero. She was a flawed young woman in desperate circumstances doing the best she could. That was what made it a great show. I've not looked at the original but this article is completely off base. The whole point of Spikes end was that while Buffy cared for Spike (and in that sense did love him) she could never be "in love" with him the way she was with Angel - and Spike knew it. For the heroine to tell the hero (or anti-hero in this case) that she loves him as he is dying - is standard fair. For him to reply "No you don't. But thanks for saying it." and very much mean exactly what he is saying - that is great television. Sadly - great television - simply goes right over the heads of some people who can only see their own simplistic, preconcieved notions in every thing that comes there way. |
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