I’m currently working my way through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show once again. My wife had never sat down and seen the whole thing. As she’s a Joss fan, this seemed bizarre and she decided to rectify this. My reaction? I was a bit hesitant. I watched through the show in its entirety twice. The first time I thoroughly enjoyed it. The second time I appreciated it for being Joss’ living film school but it hadn’t aged particularly well. There were also a number of highly problematic points in both plot and construction. Especially starting in season 4. But what the hell, I’d give it another go.
I am surprised at how much I am enjoying it on this round, fifteen plus years after it came out. But… parts of it are obviously of its time in terms of Joss Whedon’s career. This really breaks into two parts. The first is that the metaphors are incredibly bad. There have been a few issues where my wife will turn to me and say “That doesn’t really make sense” and the only defense I can come up with is “Well, it’s high school…” That applies to even the non-school related bumps. But that’s another post. The other vein of issues comes from problematic mythology building. Nearly every question that comes up will be answered in a later episode. However, often this answer doesn’t mesh with the inciting incident. I’d like to tackle one of those gaps right now. I’ll be addressing Angel and the problems he brings light to during the first two seasons.
Angel is a ball of contradictions. Not because he’s a vampire with a soul. Not because he’s a centenarian and then some. He poses a dilemma because he’s complex and at the time of his creation the world of Buffy simply isn’t. Yet. So let’s take a look at his curse, arguably his defining characteristic.
Angel was cursed by gypsies after killing their favorite daughter back in the late 1800s. His curse is that he has his soul and must continue his existence with both his soul (which affords him a conscience) and his memories of the horrible acts he committed as a vampire. It’s almost like a magic version of Alex’s punishment in A Clockwork Orange; his punishment is guilt in freedom. Lovely. Except- Except we know that when a person is turned into a vampire in the Buffyverse their soul flees the body and a demon inhabits them. This means that the vampire that murdered their tribesman isn’t being punished. He’s being shoved aside and the human soul is being pulled in to take the punishment. This is akin to selling a car, having the new owner run down a person, and then taking on the guilt of vehicular homicide when buying your car back. The crime is being committed by one driver and the punishment visited upon a different one.
That’s a problem with the casting of the curse. But what about Angel’s endurance of it? He is being tortured with this for 90 years before he chooses to go and make himself a better man, someone capable of protecting the slayer. But why was he tortured with this? Sure, he has memories of hundreds of years of atrocities. That will mark anyone. But those are just things he has seen, not things he has done. At no point in these past 90 years between 1886 and 1996 did he ever take pause in his life and meditate on what he has done and what makes up him? After even a little self reflection he should have been able to alleviate some of that guilt. Sure, trying to be a better person and atone for actions that happened in the abstract is a noble cause. Go for that. But he really should have come to the conclusion that these bad things were never his bad things.
And then there’s the curse itself. I know, the gypsies here aren’t interested in justice. They want vengeance. Perhaps they don’t know how to punish the demon portion of Angel/Angelus and will settle for afflicting his physical form and whoever is in it. That’s pretty shallow but perhaps it is what they want. But then we find out that the gypsies have the ability to punish the demon portion of Angel and (accidentally) avoid doing so. Confused? Then consider yourself on par with the Roma tribe and take a look at the Angel timeline up through the end of season 2:
- Angel with soul
- Angel the vampire demon
- Angel with soul + memories of vampire acts
- Angel the vampire demon + memories of being in love
- And at the very end of the season 2 finale – Angel with soul + tons of baggage. Seriously, this dude never gets a break
So what, you ask yourself. So everything, I tell you. This means that the demon gets punished and he’s punished directly because of the gypsy curse, but NOT the way it was intended. The vampire demon is punished once he loses his soul as the curse is lifted from having a moment of happiness. Up until then there’s been 90 years of emotional build up. 90 years of acts that the vampire will feel weakness, shame, and anger over. 90 years of preparing for vengeance to begin. You see, until Angel loses his soul for the second time, in season 2, there was no vengeance. There was no moment of the creature that murdered their beloved made to suffer. Jenny Calendar was sent to Sunnydale to keep Angel and Buffy apart but she should have been playing matchmaker. For people devoted to instilling suffering forever, these guys have no clue as to how punishment really works. After 90 years of redemption and love, of guilt and good acts, of love, that is when the vampire can start to be hurt emotionally. That is when he feels real weakness.
There are other things. There’s the fact that when Angel regains his soul it is only his earthly memories that torment him. Of course, this won’t be an explicit problem until season 6 when we are shown that he should also suffer from being pulled from the afterlife. But that’s just another example of situations raising questions early and answering them later with a different situation. But most of the problems with Angel are… well, most of them are directly responded to with Dollhouse. Oddly enough, Dollhouse seems to be Whedon’s penance for many of his philosophical gaps in the Buffy story. Angel brings up the question of where identity comes from, is it in the mind or the body? Does personality dictate identity? Where does fault lay? Does actions and responsibility fall on those who committed the acts always or sometimes does it rest with those that instill said drive? I had never connected the shows in that way but many concerns raised in Buffy are explicitly dealt with years later in another. The mythology of Buffy is sort of like an inebriated college party roundtable: there are a lot of ideas thrown out and eventually most of them are addressed in one way or another, with varying degrees of specificity. Dollhouse comes across as a thesis. Jump anywhere in their timeline, from the beginning to the future epilogues, and it’s the same questions being addressed.
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