Thoughts on Angel & Faith #5 - "In Perfect Harmony"
The new issue of Angel & Faith, guest-starring Harmony and Clem, despite being a fun comedy issue, includes some serious considerations, including one big and significant retcon of events from #35 of season 8, which has upset many people who see it as an attempt to whitewash Angel for his actions as Twilight.
Ironically, many at the same time believe that the retcon doesn't make Angel as Twilight look any better, or even makes him looks worse.
So is it really whitewashing then? Or just an attempt to make more sense of Angel's motives and characterization in season 8, which this retcon does do? I'm not going to try to guess what the writer's intention was. Instead I'm going to look at just the issue itself.
It's possible to look at Angel's interactions with Harmony as an attempt to whitewash Angel and show how awesome he is. But... if we assume that this is the intent, it really doesn't work - except for people who were already thinking that Angel was the hero just because he had "good intentions" and thought he was saving the world, because "the end justifies the means".
In fact, I think that, out of the last 6 issues Angel has been in (counting #40), this one makes him look the worst and shows him as someone who still needs to learn from his mistakes.
Christos Gage is either a really good writer, or he's a very naive writer who writes simple stuff that comes off as wonderfully subversive by accident. I don't know, and I won't try to guess.
First off, what a lot of people have said - that the retcon about his Twilight plans doesn't make him look any better - is something I very much agree with. I think the purpose might not be to whitewash him (or if it is - it's the worst piece of whitewashing ever, since it just replaces one bad intent with another) but to make more sense of his actions and motivations in season 8 and make #35 look less OOC. I was always wondering just what happened to Angel and was he so much under Twilight's influence that he was ready to let the world be destroyed? This was also the biggest complaint of AtS-Angel fans: that Angel would let the world be destroyed, and particularly not care about Connor dying. So, yeah, it's a big retcon and it doesn't match with #35. But I'm not so sure they're doing it because #35 made Angel look bad, rather than because #35 didn't make a lot of sense for Angel the character, unlike everything else in season 8 that I could see him doing, based on what we saw of him previously.
I can see him thinking he gets to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die. Isn't that exactly what he did with Lindsey? Angel decided that Faith deserved redemption, while Lindsey didn't.
So, instead of Angel who believed he could live with Buffy as gods in a "perfect" new universe for just the two of them, we have an Angel who was self-righteously believing that he could play God and decide who lives and dies and who goes to this new "paradise". Which is better how, exactly?
And moreover, this version makes it seem like he really believed in those ideas and wasn't affected by Twilight to that extent. And what's worst of all - he doesn't seem to even now realize how wrong it was!
Angel in this issue is dripping with self-righteousness and self-importance. He seems like someone who really hasn't learned anything from his mistakes, and those first 5 issues leave him at a place where he needs a redemptive arc much more than he seemed to when we saw him catatonic in #40. From #1 where he seemed to understand how wrong what he did was, he got to #4 where he seemed to think everything would've been fine it he had just had someone like Faith by him to tell him when he went "too far" and #5 seems to confirm that he feels guilty for the consequences of his actions, but doesn't understand that the very ideas behind his plan (ends justify the means, it's OK to save the world by doing evil - or as Whistler would say, to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs; it's perfectly OK to play God and decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die) were wrong. And those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them, which we've already seen with Angel planning to resurrect Giles.
Angel at one point tells Harmony, who says she doesn't know the names of people she killed, that he knows "every one" of his victim's names... which is so exaggerated that it has to be a lot of BS. Angel seems to be really eager to distance himself from Harmony and her way of thinking, and in this effort he ridiculously exaggerates. He might be an excellent detective, but there's no way he can be sure he knows every single victim's name. Just one example - just recently, he couldn't even remember he was at the scene when Pearl and Nash slaughtered the Slayers. And now he supposedly knows all their names? What about the Slayers that died in the bombings? The soldiers at Tibet? Let's say he did find the names of all the people he killed with his own hands as Angelus, but when did he get the time to find out all the names of people who died as a result of Twilight? Unless he's only counting as his victims those he killed with his own hands - which would be really worrying, if he misunderstands the concept of responsibility and guilt like that. Furthermore, it's contrary to what we've seen in the previous 4 issues: he hasn't thought about any of his individual victims other than Giles (and Jenny), someone he actually knew. He's been completely obsessed with resurrecting Giles, rather than all those other people whose deaths he caused.
That line made him sound really self-important, and I think it's just Angel trying too much to show he's different from the "narcissist with no soul or conscience, a killer" (projecting much, Angel? Harmony's not the only one this could apply to). Or, if you have a less generous reading of the issue, maybe Gage wanted to emphasize it, and it backfired.
And there's another interesting parallel in the issue. The issue starts with a scene that gently pokes fun at Angel showing his love for noirs and admitting he liked seeing himself in the role of a noir hero - and goes on to say a line that makes it clear that a big part of being the hero is always about rescuing damsels in distress: "knowing that there's a beautiful woman on the other side of the door who desperately needs my help". In the end it turns out that the whole thing was about Clem wanting to play a hero to Harmony's damsel, hoping that it would impress her so much that it would lead to them living happily ever after - never mind if he had to put her in distress in the first place for that to be possible. Angel is the one who figured out that Clem was the culprit - probably not just because of his detective skills, but for the same reason he was so good at analyzing the psyche of the stalker guy in I Fall to Pieces - he knows about guys loving to play the role of the hero and save damsels, particularly those they're in love with. But Clem was pretending; Angel loves this role so much that he tends to genuinely believe in it, and it causes much more severe consequences, especially when someone like Twilight can use it to manipulate him.
This entry was originally posted at http://timetravellingbunny.dreamwidth.org/. Comment here or there, as you like.
Ironically, many at the same time believe that the retcon doesn't make Angel as Twilight look any better, or even makes him looks worse.
So is it really whitewashing then? Or just an attempt to make more sense of Angel's motives and characterization in season 8, which this retcon does do? I'm not going to try to guess what the writer's intention was. Instead I'm going to look at just the issue itself.
It's possible to look at Angel's interactions with Harmony as an attempt to whitewash Angel and show how awesome he is. But... if we assume that this is the intent, it really doesn't work - except for people who were already thinking that Angel was the hero just because he had "good intentions" and thought he was saving the world, because "the end justifies the means".
In fact, I think that, out of the last 6 issues Angel has been in (counting #40), this one makes him look the worst and shows him as someone who still needs to learn from his mistakes.
Christos Gage is either a really good writer, or he's a very naive writer who writes simple stuff that comes off as wonderfully subversive by accident. I don't know, and I won't try to guess.
First off, what a lot of people have said - that the retcon about his Twilight plans doesn't make him look any better - is something I very much agree with. I think the purpose might not be to whitewash him (or if it is - it's the worst piece of whitewashing ever, since it just replaces one bad intent with another) but to make more sense of his actions and motivations in season 8 and make #35 look less OOC. I was always wondering just what happened to Angel and was he so much under Twilight's influence that he was ready to let the world be destroyed? This was also the biggest complaint of AtS-Angel fans: that Angel would let the world be destroyed, and particularly not care about Connor dying. So, yeah, it's a big retcon and it doesn't match with #35. But I'm not so sure they're doing it because #35 made Angel look bad, rather than because #35 didn't make a lot of sense for Angel the character, unlike everything else in season 8 that I could see him doing, based on what we saw of him previously.
I can see him thinking he gets to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die. Isn't that exactly what he did with Lindsey? Angel decided that Faith deserved redemption, while Lindsey didn't.
So, instead of Angel who believed he could live with Buffy as gods in a "perfect" new universe for just the two of them, we have an Angel who was self-righteously believing that he could play God and decide who lives and dies and who goes to this new "paradise". Which is better how, exactly?
And moreover, this version makes it seem like he really believed in those ideas and wasn't affected by Twilight to that extent. And what's worst of all - he doesn't seem to even now realize how wrong it was!
Angel in this issue is dripping with self-righteousness and self-importance. He seems like someone who really hasn't learned anything from his mistakes, and those first 5 issues leave him at a place where he needs a redemptive arc much more than he seemed to when we saw him catatonic in #40. From #1 where he seemed to understand how wrong what he did was, he got to #4 where he seemed to think everything would've been fine it he had just had someone like Faith by him to tell him when he went "too far" and #5 seems to confirm that he feels guilty for the consequences of his actions, but doesn't understand that the very ideas behind his plan (ends justify the means, it's OK to save the world by doing evil - or as Whistler would say, to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs; it's perfectly OK to play God and decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die) were wrong. And those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them, which we've already seen with Angel planning to resurrect Giles.
Angel at one point tells Harmony, who says she doesn't know the names of people she killed, that he knows "every one" of his victim's names... which is so exaggerated that it has to be a lot of BS. Angel seems to be really eager to distance himself from Harmony and her way of thinking, and in this effort he ridiculously exaggerates. He might be an excellent detective, but there's no way he can be sure he knows every single victim's name. Just one example - just recently, he couldn't even remember he was at the scene when Pearl and Nash slaughtered the Slayers. And now he supposedly knows all their names? What about the Slayers that died in the bombings? The soldiers at Tibet? Let's say he did find the names of all the people he killed with his own hands as Angelus, but when did he get the time to find out all the names of people who died as a result of Twilight? Unless he's only counting as his victims those he killed with his own hands - which would be really worrying, if he misunderstands the concept of responsibility and guilt like that. Furthermore, it's contrary to what we've seen in the previous 4 issues: he hasn't thought about any of his individual victims other than Giles (and Jenny), someone he actually knew. He's been completely obsessed with resurrecting Giles, rather than all those other people whose deaths he caused.
That line made him sound really self-important, and I think it's just Angel trying too much to show he's different from the "narcissist with no soul or conscience, a killer" (projecting much, Angel? Harmony's not the only one this could apply to). Or, if you have a less generous reading of the issue, maybe Gage wanted to emphasize it, and it backfired.
And there's another interesting parallel in the issue. The issue starts with a scene that gently pokes fun at Angel showing his love for noirs and admitting he liked seeing himself in the role of a noir hero - and goes on to say a line that makes it clear that a big part of being the hero is always about rescuing damsels in distress: "knowing that there's a beautiful woman on the other side of the door who desperately needs my help". In the end it turns out that the whole thing was about Clem wanting to play a hero to Harmony's damsel, hoping that it would impress her so much that it would lead to them living happily ever after - never mind if he had to put her in distress in the first place for that to be possible. Angel is the one who figured out that Clem was the culprit - probably not just because of his detective skills, but for the same reason he was so good at analyzing the psyche of the stalker guy in I Fall to Pieces - he knows about guys loving to play the role of the hero and save damsels, particularly those they're in love with. But Clem was pretending; Angel loves this role so much that he tends to genuinely believe in it, and it causes much more severe consequences, especially when someone like Twilight can use it to manipulate him.
This entry was originally posted at http://timetravellingbunny.dreamwidth.org/. Comment here or there, as you like.