Notes on Buffy 3.10: Amends
Standard disclaimer: I'll often speak of foreshadowing, but that doesn't mean I'm at all committing to the idea that there was some fixed design from the word go -- it's a short hand for talking about the resonances that end up in the text as it unspools.
Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS. ( Read more... )
Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS. ( Read more... )
a) Buffy ('s life and duty)
b) Love (in the romantic sense)
????
I think you're overselling Buffy as a lover to Riley and Spike (season six) here--which are the times when Xander was with Anya. But we'll discuss that when we get there. I can't speak for Maggie entirely. But I think her point with Xander is not that he is fair or that he is understanding, but the more narrow point that right on the fundamental point that Buffy is taking big risks on other people's lives because of her feelings for Angel--and the related point that that endangers all of them. Xander doesn't appreciate the ways in which Buffy needs Angel, but that itself doesn't make him wrong on the issue of whether their lives are being endangered because of Buffy/Angel. His side of the argument ceases to matter after this--and it probably shouldn't. We probably disagree on this issue in a big way, but I think this is Maggie's point and I agree with it.
Hm, Buffy is part of the world - and she doesn't want Angel dead. Insofar she is absolutely right. So, part of this world doesn't want Angel dead
That depends on a difference of interpretation of Angel's statement. I'd say he wasn't saying that the whole world wants him dead, but that the majority of the world does. Buffy's reasons for not wanting Angel dead are unique to her; none of his other victims, besides perhaps Drusilla, are alive and in love with him.
(Angel goes so far as to hit Buffy to make her part of the world that wants him dead).
Not to go all schoolyard, but she punched him first. *g* And really, he doesn't punch her back, he grabs her. Part of the big shock in Sanctuary is that Angel punched Buffy back, for the first time (while souled/not pretending to be soulless).
On a meta level, at least in BtVS, Buffy is indeed the world, the driving force in this narrative. By stating her view on him Buffy proves Angel wrong in his assumption that "the (whole) world wants him gone".
Buffy may be the world. But she's also a character, and the idea that she is the whole world is something the show problemetizes in many ways, especially in Normal Again. Saying her wishes automatically line up with the world's because she is the world because she's the protagonist gets into some dicey territory. And again, Buffy is not representative of Angel's victims, and she really is not representative of the damage he's done to the world. She loves him and needs him for reasons that are not (all) to do with his being a monster.
Well, Buffy's still right. On the level of self awareness and the "road to redemption" it is rather irrelevant if someone is a murderer or a petty thief: The important task is to choose another way of life in the future. Buffy doesn't look at Angel's deeds here, but his will to change. That's where she's coming from (not from the particular "sin", but why we do sin - we're all weak).
I'll give you this one to a degree, especially in isolation. I think it can still be read as Buffy minimizing what Angel has done, and consequently what he's going through. So how we read it depends a little bit on how we read the rest of the scene--and since my view is a bit darker on Buffy overall, I tend to take the worse reading. But you're not wrong.
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I make a distinction here between Buffy's "feelings" (love) for Angel and her "needs" (her psychological structure). She takes the risks because of her needs (and less of her feelings ). To make the pain of season 2 go away, to make sense of falling in love with Angel in the first place, she needs Angel to do something worthwhile with his life, fighting the good fight, redeeming himself. If Angel just goes away/commits suicide/turns evil again, then indeed she did fall in love with nothing more than a monster (as is textual in this episode: "...then all you've ever been is a monster"). Then all he ever gave her was pain. Buffy needs healing from season 2. This is how she's trying to heal (if she succeeds is open for interpretation).
none of his other victims, besides perhaps Drusilla, are alive and in love with him.
Again, i don't think her being in love with him is the deciding factor here (though it is certainly in the mix). She is "the survivor" when it comes to Angel(us). Insofar, she has a certain authority in the matter (Drusilla is dead, the most dead person in the 'verse). She is also a victim, which gives her even more leverage. I personally despise Angel for not even listening to her - not because she's BUFFY, but because here is one of his victims in front of him, asking something of him, and he's unwilling to give it. Here, he's able to make amends to his one surviving victim and he turns her down.
Buffy may be the world.
Well, i only tacked that on as an afterthought, anyways. ;-)
Buffy is not representative of Angel's victims
Pray tell, who else of his victims is alive to claim agency? We do watch BtVS mostly through Buffy's eyes, she is the one victim we know intimately. The dead, you say? They don't care about revenge or redemption.
I think it can still be read as Buffy minimizing what Angel has done, and consequently what he's going through.
I agree with this. She cannot know, she's 17 and alive and not 250 and cursed. I just think it doesn't matter too much: Buffy only has her own narrative as agency to draw from, and thus she argues from her POV. And, ultimately, it is not enough, the both of them are unable to come to an understanding here.
since my view is a bit darker on Buffy overall,
I don't know if i'm jumping to wrong conclusions, but i want to say it anyways. :-P
I didn't see a drama about a teenage girl loving too much in "Amends" - i did see the drama of the age old question whether we pay "an eye for an eye" or try to resocialize people into our society even if they have fallen by the wayside. And how much we are able to help these people and how much these people do have to work on their own. Whedon clearly comes down on the side of "rehabilitation" - but also says the "criminal" has to work for it and ultimately needs to want to change. That help and understanding canot be there always (Buffy isn't able to understand Angel here).
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Perhaps. And yet she was kissing him in Revelations. I accept that this may be her desire here, by Amends--to make him be right again. But I don't think that's all that's motivating her. We are too close to her kissing him, and realizing that she can't trust herself to be around him because she is too attracted to him, for me to feel comfortable arguing that this is more about her needs (for his redemption) than her feelings. Certainly, she talks about the needs you mention, and that is important. I believe they're there. I'm just unconvinced that they're all of what's there. Perhaps you're not arguing that her feelings aren't there--but I think the feelings are more important to the story than I believe you are arguing. (I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth too much! I hope you understand that it's done with respect, and hoping to come to a greater understanding.)
Pray tell, who else of his victims is alive to claim agency? We do watch BtVS mostly through Buffy's eyes, she is the one victim we know intimately. The dead, you say? They don't care about revenge or redemption.
There's Giles. There's Theresa's family. There's the Scoobies, even--whom Angel didn't torment emotionally in the same way he tormented Buffy (and so hurt less), but whom he threatened to kill and who don't have the same emotional reasons for wanting to help him. You can say that Giles and the Scoobies offer to help Buffy. Yes, they do--but I'm not so sure Buffy is speaking for him.
I didn't see a drama about a teenage girl loving too much in "Amends" - i did see the drama of the age old question whether we pay "an eye for an eye" or try to resocialize people into our society even if they have fallen by the wayside. And how much we are able to help these people and how much these people do have to work on their own. Whedon clearly comes down on the side of "rehabilitation" - but also says the "criminal" has to work for it and ultimately needs to want to change. That help and understanding canot be there always (Buffy isn't able to understand Angel here).
I agree with this. But again, Buffy is not just a victim of Angel's. I don't think it's that she loves him too much per se. But she does love him. Her reasons for not wanting him dead are not, I think, about a belief in rehabilitation. That may be part of it. But asking the one person who seems to love him the most--even if she is not overtaken by love, she still cares for him more than most other people do--to stand in for all his victims to decide on/comment on the question of whether revenge or rehabilitation should be worthwhile doesn't seem like the best way to examine this theme--if that is the sole purpose. I think it's a more complex case, where Buffy's love, and thus Angel blinders, do enter into the situation.
All that said--I do agree that Buffy does have some real authority in this situation as one of Angel's victims. I think she oversells that authority, and that is part of my issue/problem. BUT--I agree that that authority is there.
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And why does she do that? She's trying to convince Angel to listen to her, to not kill himself.
It would've been wrong to co-opt another person's suffering to use it as an argument. It's tactless, cruel manipulation when Xander co-opts Giles' grief for Jenny to 'win' an argument with Buffy.
The only way to use the other people's suffering would be to have Giles march up on that hill with her, to have Willow and Xander and Cordy stand there as a community and tell him in "I" statements how he's wronged them and that by killing himself, he's doubling down on that wrong. That's how you do an intervention. People own their own suffering, others don't get to co-opt it to make a point.
But again, the situation is rigged. Buffy's the only one really interested in fighting for Angel here, in not giving up on him. I think Giles and the Scoobies are mostly helping research for Buffy's sake and because letting an evil being manipulate Angel isn't a good idea. But who cares about Angel? The only person is Buffy.
So in desperation, as the only one there, she inflates her authority and he still doesn't listen/care. It'll take God and a miracle before Angel will believe he has a purpose in this world, because only God/PTBs can forgive him now. (Without a soul, he can't look away from the victims. With a soul, he can't stand to look at them. And really, how does a person own up to that level of wrongdoing?)
Buffy couldn't even get Angel to care about the ways he hurt her and he 'loves' her. I guess I'm wondering -- what else was she supposed to do? What else could she do?
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Word, word, word to all of that. Every. Single. Sentence.
(Gah, this inspires me into another Angelic rant. But, not now, not here. That douchebag!)
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