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revdorothyl at 07:14pm on 20/05/2004 under angel episode commentary
revdorothyl at 07:14pm on 20/05/2004 under angel episode commentaryWhile I was writing my previous post on last night's Angel series finale and chatting with some fellow fans here in the Div. Library, a couple of patterns seemed to emerge which I couldn't explore in any depth. So, this is my post-script on the preponderance of "Judas Iscariot" imagery and references in "Not Fade Away" and the relationship between hope and loyalty in that episode.
Judas, Judas, . . . Who's Got the Judas?
One of the presenters at the SLAYAGE conference is working on a paper on the theme of "Absent Fathers and Multiplying Christs" in BtVS, and gave me the following explanation today for where the idea for that paper came from: "...well, the characters just keep stepping up to take the Christ role with an I-Spartacus-like eagerness. So I fell to wondering how that fitted in to the story as a whole, and to the fact that, while numerous characters act as human (or vampire) world-saving-sacrificial lambs, there's no one in the Father God role. And even human fathers are thin on the ground. So that's the territory I'm exploring."
It's not hard to see how "Not Fade Away" continues that pattern, in a sense. But rather than a multitude of the series regulars stepping up to volunteer for the Christ role, you COULD say that there was a line around the block of characters applying for the role of Judas Iscariot last night -- for the role of the archetypal betrayer, whether that betrayal is seen as tragic and redeemable or simply self-serving... or actually inspired by evil.
Angel makes a point of using the Christ-line, "One of you will betray me", and casting Wesley in that role as a pseudo-Judas. (See my previous post for the argument that Wesley might more accurately be identified with the disciple Peter in this case.) Spike seems disappointed not to get the plum role of being the guy who apparently stabs Angel in the back, and then asks if he can at least do the Peter-denying-him-three-times-before-the-cock-crows number. Harmony ACTUALLY betrays Angel to Marcus Hamilton, or at least tries to (again, see my previous post for the difficulties I had with the implication that no soul-less vampire is capable of loyalty, and that therefore Angel doesn't blame Harmony for her betrayal -- because she was simply incapable of doing otherwise).
And Lorne reluctantly betrays Lindsey when they're ostensibly fighting on the same team, by shooting him full of holes (betraying not only Lindsey's trust that as long as they were fighting on the same side, Angel wouldn't double-cross him, but also Lindsey's egocentric assumption that it would be Angel himself who would kill him, someday). More, you could say that Lorne is cast in the role of semi-deserter, at least, because he's the only one of the gang who steadily mistrusts Angel, both last week and this week ("I'm not playing to the crowd, Gunn," he says, when Gunn thinks that Lorne's doubts about Angel's goodness and rightness are being uttered for the benefit of any mystical eavesdroppers), and he's the only one who says that he won't be joining them again when this is over, that Angel will never see him again, and that he'd prefer Angel not even TRY to find him again.
But, from Lorne's perspective -- and, I suspect, from many fans' perspective -- there's a sense in which Angel seems to be creeping perilously close to playing Judas, rather than Christ, in this little Passion Play.
[There's some story, often used as a sermon illustration in days gone by, about an artist -- maybe it was even meant to be da Vinci -- doing a painting of the Last Supper and finding a man with a pure and good face to model for the portrait of Christ, and then, some years later, finally finding a man with a face full of evil and sin to model for the figure of Judas Iscariot, and discovering that it was the same man -- just that the life he'd lived in the meantime and the bad choices he'd made had taken its toll on his face as well as on his soul. Don't know the source, or whether the story's true or not, but it suddenly came to mind, just now.]
Angel, after all, kills Drogan (though a friend has argued that Drogan might have been relieved to at last be let out of his eternal responsibility and burden), joins the Black Thorn only in order to betray them (all in a good cause, admittedly, but his method of killing the Arch-duke or whatever his name was -- by poisoning his food supply -- was more than a tad devious), and -- most importantly, I would argue -- betrays both Lindsey AND Lorne by asking Lorne to do something which is so evidently damaging to his soul.
Hope is Stronger Than Loyalty?
I couldn't quite get my head around the idea that hope and loyalty might be in opposition to each other -- until I put the idea in context: that loyalty to the forces of evil, to the powers of destruction and annihilation, would pretty much HAVE to be built on the destruction of anything resembling hope for a better future, a better world, or for redemption.
[I re-read books three through eight of Christopher Stasheff's "A Wizard in Rhyme" series in recent weeks, in order to get myself through the traumas of final grading, and -- besides contributing to my sudden urge to write awful poetry last week, I'm now sure -- I was reminded of the medieval Catholic theology which makes up the very fabric of reality in Stasheff's alternate universe. Especially in book 3, THE WITCH DOCTOR, this includes the idea that the forces of evil FEED upon despair and depend on people NOT remembering that they always have hope for redemption, if they repent. The bureaucracy of witches that the evil sorceress used to administer her version of Austria depended on those folks who had sold their souls to the devil losing all hope for forgiveness or salvation. Once the agnostic wizard Saul started giving the lower-level minions of evil hope for healing and a chance to repent, their loyalty to the reign of evil went up in smoke.]
So, that's Evil's game, we can say: take away all hope (which is unpredictable and entirely alien to the nature of evil) and what's left will be something you CAN predict and understand, namely a parody of 'loyalty' based on self-interest and fear.
But how does that fit in with OUR guys, the good guys?
Well, for one thing, you could say that the Black Thorn made a major miscalculation right from the start in assuming that Angel's hope rested solely in the Shanshu prophecy. At the very least, the sorceror who had played such a big part in creating Connor's new identity and new memories should have had a clue that Angel's real hope for a human future -- that all of Angel's humanity (in a sense) -- now resided in Connor. As long as Connor survived, as Angel told his son before sending him out of the killing zone, the best of Angel survives. (Which, of course, raises the question of how long the SP will allow Connor to go on living, regardless of whether or not he's anywhere near Angel, since they're completely aware of who he is and -- presumably -- what he means to Angel. But I'd rather not contemplate that disturbing idea, right now.)
And, for another thing, you could say that where Angel's hope is, there will his loyalty be also. Angel's loyalty to Connor is beyond question at this point, and it's not just because he loves Connor. At various times, it's been made clear that Angel also loves his friends and colleagues, in a variety of ways (was it in season 3 that we had that comic scene of Angel being afraid Cordelia was IN love with him, only to discover that his gang had been having a big-purple-dinosaur moment while he was elsewhere -- "I love you, you love me. We're a happy family", or whatever the lyrics to that song were -- and that they had already settled the fact that they all loved one another as friends and family?). Though Angel might "love" Fred and Wes and Gunn and Lorne and want to be loyal to them, his love and loyalty toward Connor would always take precedence. Why? Perhaps because Connor, as Angel's own flesh and blood miracle offspring, embodied Angel's HOPE in a way that the others never could.
It's an idea, anyway.
One could also argue that both loyalty AND hope were completely beyond Angelus, until he was so painfully reconnected with his human soul, and that this experience certainly colored his treatment and expectations of Harmony, whether rightly or wrongly.
Maybe Harmony WAS just being her old clueless self and trying to avoid taking any responsibility for her own actions when she tried to tell Angel that if he had ever really trusted her or put any faith in her, maybe she WOULD have been capable of loyalty by now, with or without a soul. (After all, Spike demonstrated his own capacity for loyalty towards those whom he loved -- and those whom they, in turn, loved, in the case of Buffy -- time and again while he was still sans soul.) Harmony seemed to be suggesting that if Angel had held out any hope that she might be able to change, then SHE might have been able to believe in it, too, and her loyalty would not have been simply a matter of serving whoever seemed to offer the biggest pay-off at any given moment.
Again, we've got the idea that loyalty follows hope and has a hard time existing without it. And we're also reminded that it's AWFULLY hard to hope for something you've never experienced yourself (I haven't got time to go look up the various quotes about hoping for what is not seen from the New Testament, right now, fortunately, so I'll spare you all the gratuitous biblical references). Angel's own experience of what it's like to be a soul-less vampire includes plenty of atrocities and mass murders, but nothing resembling hope or even change, much less loyalty or love. Therefore, he can't accept the possibility that such potential might exist in other vampires. Maybe he's right, and maybe Spike's just the rarest of flukes in the rarest of circumstances needed to allow a vampire to love at all and eventually love a Slayer to the point of voluntarily regaining his soul. But what if he's not? I don't know.
On the other hand, you could say that in the Gunn-Anne exchange we saw LOYALTY trumping the need for HOPE. Gunn asked Anne what she would do if she discovered that there is no hope for humanity, that the deck is stacked and the hate-filled powers that hold all the high cards will never allow things on this earth to get better. And Anne replied, of course, that she would go on doing what she's doing, taking care of her kids to the best of her ability. She would go on being LOYAL to the people who so desperately need help. And Gunn seemed to find that a highly satisfactory response. After all, that's what he himself was basically planning to do that night: sacrifice hope for personal survival with NO realistic hope that his death would make a real difference in the lives of earth's suffering billions, all out of loyalty to his comrades and to the cause they serve -- fighting the good fight simply to make a witness (as Angel's speech to Connor in AtS 4.01 implied), to live and die according to the way the world SHOULD be, rather than the way it IS.
But, if Wesley really did (consciously, or unconsciously) set out to get himself killed that night, simply because he had nothing left in this world to HOPE for or live for (one possible reading, in retrospect, of what he said to Illyria while he was tending her wounds), then we're faced with the possibility that the destruction of his hope also rendered his loyalty shaky, since his own death threw the success of the whole mission into jeopardy.
If Illyria hadn't finished off her own quartet (AND their vehicle) in record time and then come looking for Wesley out of concern for him, then Wesley's target would have been the sole survivor of the Black Thorns -- which would have taken a lot of the impact away from the clean-sweep message Angel was trying to send. However, a friend in the library suggests that Wesley KNEW Illyria would come looking for him and finish what he'd started . . . which would take that hint of sabotage or defeatism out of his own desire to cease the struggle.
However, if it was Wesley's unconscious mind that decided it was time for him to move on from this vale of tears, without the knowing consent of his conscious mind, then in Wesley's case, as in Anne's and Gunn's, we could say that loyalty survived the death of hope. Wesley's hope may have been gone, but loyalty to Angel kept him putting one foot in front of the other, to arrive at the battle that he didn't consciously realize would be his last. The problem was that, just beyond his conscious awareness, his loyalty to Fred was pulling him in another direction, calling him to embark upon a different journey, that they two might be together again.
(Yes, I'm hoping that Illyria-Fred wasn't JUST telling Wesley what he wanted to hear as he lay dying in her arms, and that, even if Fred's soul was beyond the powers of all earthly magicks to restore, that soul DOES exist in some transcended state, somewhere, where Wes's poor, tired soul can join with her once more. I'm a hopeFUL romantic, as Joan Wilder might say, when it comes to joyous reunions in the hereafter if not before.)
As far as Lorne's hope and loyalty are concerned, I'd argue (briefly, because while working on this post I've come up against the closing time in two separate libraries, and I'm now in one of my campus offices, racing against the fact that I haven't eaten since breakfast and it's now past supper-time) that in his case, also, loyalty towards Angel and the others seems to have outlived his hope or faith that they were the good guys and accomplishing something good for this world. However, Lorne seems NOT to have given up ALL hope -- that's why he said he wouldn't rejoin the Angel crew in the alley, or anywhere else. If he had no more hope, what would it matter to him where he died? But if he still had the capacity to feel THAT soul-sick and disappointed by what their mission had turned into and what his fearless leader was demanding of him, then -- I'd like to think -- Lorne must still have had the hope or at least a glimmering of faith that SOMEWHERE there must be something better, something more redemptive, or simply more livable, for him. Lorne must have still had the capacity to HOPE that he might hope again, at some point in the future.
Or at least that's what I'd like to think.
Judas, Judas, . . . Who's Got the Judas?
One of the presenters at the SLAYAGE conference is working on a paper on the theme of "Absent Fathers and Multiplying Christs" in BtVS, and gave me the following explanation today for where the idea for that paper came from: "...well, the characters just keep stepping up to take the Christ role with an I-Spartacus-like eagerness. So I fell to wondering how that fitted in to the story as a whole, and to the fact that, while numerous characters act as human (or vampire) world-saving-sacrificial lambs, there's no one in the Father God role. And even human fathers are thin on the ground. So that's the territory I'm exploring."
It's not hard to see how "Not Fade Away" continues that pattern, in a sense. But rather than a multitude of the series regulars stepping up to volunteer for the Christ role, you COULD say that there was a line around the block of characters applying for the role of Judas Iscariot last night -- for the role of the archetypal betrayer, whether that betrayal is seen as tragic and redeemable or simply self-serving... or actually inspired by evil.
Angel makes a point of using the Christ-line, "One of you will betray me", and casting Wesley in that role as a pseudo-Judas. (See my previous post for the argument that Wesley might more accurately be identified with the disciple Peter in this case.) Spike seems disappointed not to get the plum role of being the guy who apparently stabs Angel in the back, and then asks if he can at least do the Peter-denying-him-three-times-before-the-cock-crows number. Harmony ACTUALLY betrays Angel to Marcus Hamilton, or at least tries to (again, see my previous post for the difficulties I had with the implication that no soul-less vampire is capable of loyalty, and that therefore Angel doesn't blame Harmony for her betrayal -- because she was simply incapable of doing otherwise).
And Lorne reluctantly betrays Lindsey when they're ostensibly fighting on the same team, by shooting him full of holes (betraying not only Lindsey's trust that as long as they were fighting on the same side, Angel wouldn't double-cross him, but also Lindsey's egocentric assumption that it would be Angel himself who would kill him, someday). More, you could say that Lorne is cast in the role of semi-deserter, at least, because he's the only one of the gang who steadily mistrusts Angel, both last week and this week ("I'm not playing to the crowd, Gunn," he says, when Gunn thinks that Lorne's doubts about Angel's goodness and rightness are being uttered for the benefit of any mystical eavesdroppers), and he's the only one who says that he won't be joining them again when this is over, that Angel will never see him again, and that he'd prefer Angel not even TRY to find him again.
But, from Lorne's perspective -- and, I suspect, from many fans' perspective -- there's a sense in which Angel seems to be creeping perilously close to playing Judas, rather than Christ, in this little Passion Play.
[There's some story, often used as a sermon illustration in days gone by, about an artist -- maybe it was even meant to be da Vinci -- doing a painting of the Last Supper and finding a man with a pure and good face to model for the portrait of Christ, and then, some years later, finally finding a man with a face full of evil and sin to model for the figure of Judas Iscariot, and discovering that it was the same man -- just that the life he'd lived in the meantime and the bad choices he'd made had taken its toll on his face as well as on his soul. Don't know the source, or whether the story's true or not, but it suddenly came to mind, just now.]
Angel, after all, kills Drogan (though a friend has argued that Drogan might have been relieved to at last be let out of his eternal responsibility and burden), joins the Black Thorn only in order to betray them (all in a good cause, admittedly, but his method of killing the Arch-duke or whatever his name was -- by poisoning his food supply -- was more than a tad devious), and -- most importantly, I would argue -- betrays both Lindsey AND Lorne by asking Lorne to do something which is so evidently damaging to his soul.
Hope is Stronger Than Loyalty?
I couldn't quite get my head around the idea that hope and loyalty might be in opposition to each other -- until I put the idea in context: that loyalty to the forces of evil, to the powers of destruction and annihilation, would pretty much HAVE to be built on the destruction of anything resembling hope for a better future, a better world, or for redemption.
[I re-read books three through eight of Christopher Stasheff's "A Wizard in Rhyme" series in recent weeks, in order to get myself through the traumas of final grading, and -- besides contributing to my sudden urge to write awful poetry last week, I'm now sure -- I was reminded of the medieval Catholic theology which makes up the very fabric of reality in Stasheff's alternate universe. Especially in book 3, THE WITCH DOCTOR, this includes the idea that the forces of evil FEED upon despair and depend on people NOT remembering that they always have hope for redemption, if they repent. The bureaucracy of witches that the evil sorceress used to administer her version of Austria depended on those folks who had sold their souls to the devil losing all hope for forgiveness or salvation. Once the agnostic wizard Saul started giving the lower-level minions of evil hope for healing and a chance to repent, their loyalty to the reign of evil went up in smoke.]
So, that's Evil's game, we can say: take away all hope (which is unpredictable and entirely alien to the nature of evil) and what's left will be something you CAN predict and understand, namely a parody of 'loyalty' based on self-interest and fear.
But how does that fit in with OUR guys, the good guys?
Well, for one thing, you could say that the Black Thorn made a major miscalculation right from the start in assuming that Angel's hope rested solely in the Shanshu prophecy. At the very least, the sorceror who had played such a big part in creating Connor's new identity and new memories should have had a clue that Angel's real hope for a human future -- that all of Angel's humanity (in a sense) -- now resided in Connor. As long as Connor survived, as Angel told his son before sending him out of the killing zone, the best of Angel survives. (Which, of course, raises the question of how long the SP will allow Connor to go on living, regardless of whether or not he's anywhere near Angel, since they're completely aware of who he is and -- presumably -- what he means to Angel. But I'd rather not contemplate that disturbing idea, right now.)
And, for another thing, you could say that where Angel's hope is, there will his loyalty be also. Angel's loyalty to Connor is beyond question at this point, and it's not just because he loves Connor. At various times, it's been made clear that Angel also loves his friends and colleagues, in a variety of ways (was it in season 3 that we had that comic scene of Angel being afraid Cordelia was IN love with him, only to discover that his gang had been having a big-purple-dinosaur moment while he was elsewhere -- "I love you, you love me. We're a happy family", or whatever the lyrics to that song were -- and that they had already settled the fact that they all loved one another as friends and family?). Though Angel might "love" Fred and Wes and Gunn and Lorne and want to be loyal to them, his love and loyalty toward Connor would always take precedence. Why? Perhaps because Connor, as Angel's own flesh and blood miracle offspring, embodied Angel's HOPE in a way that the others never could.
It's an idea, anyway.
One could also argue that both loyalty AND hope were completely beyond Angelus, until he was so painfully reconnected with his human soul, and that this experience certainly colored his treatment and expectations of Harmony, whether rightly or wrongly.
Maybe Harmony WAS just being her old clueless self and trying to avoid taking any responsibility for her own actions when she tried to tell Angel that if he had ever really trusted her or put any faith in her, maybe she WOULD have been capable of loyalty by now, with or without a soul. (After all, Spike demonstrated his own capacity for loyalty towards those whom he loved -- and those whom they, in turn, loved, in the case of Buffy -- time and again while he was still sans soul.) Harmony seemed to be suggesting that if Angel had held out any hope that she might be able to change, then SHE might have been able to believe in it, too, and her loyalty would not have been simply a matter of serving whoever seemed to offer the biggest pay-off at any given moment.
Again, we've got the idea that loyalty follows hope and has a hard time existing without it. And we're also reminded that it's AWFULLY hard to hope for something you've never experienced yourself (I haven't got time to go look up the various quotes about hoping for what is not seen from the New Testament, right now, fortunately, so I'll spare you all the gratuitous biblical references). Angel's own experience of what it's like to be a soul-less vampire includes plenty of atrocities and mass murders, but nothing resembling hope or even change, much less loyalty or love. Therefore, he can't accept the possibility that such potential might exist in other vampires. Maybe he's right, and maybe Spike's just the rarest of flukes in the rarest of circumstances needed to allow a vampire to love at all and eventually love a Slayer to the point of voluntarily regaining his soul. But what if he's not? I don't know.
On the other hand, you could say that in the Gunn-Anne exchange we saw LOYALTY trumping the need for HOPE. Gunn asked Anne what she would do if she discovered that there is no hope for humanity, that the deck is stacked and the hate-filled powers that hold all the high cards will never allow things on this earth to get better. And Anne replied, of course, that she would go on doing what she's doing, taking care of her kids to the best of her ability. She would go on being LOYAL to the people who so desperately need help. And Gunn seemed to find that a highly satisfactory response. After all, that's what he himself was basically planning to do that night: sacrifice hope for personal survival with NO realistic hope that his death would make a real difference in the lives of earth's suffering billions, all out of loyalty to his comrades and to the cause they serve -- fighting the good fight simply to make a witness (as Angel's speech to Connor in AtS 4.01 implied), to live and die according to the way the world SHOULD be, rather than the way it IS.
But, if Wesley really did (consciously, or unconsciously) set out to get himself killed that night, simply because he had nothing left in this world to HOPE for or live for (one possible reading, in retrospect, of what he said to Illyria while he was tending her wounds), then we're faced with the possibility that the destruction of his hope also rendered his loyalty shaky, since his own death threw the success of the whole mission into jeopardy.
If Illyria hadn't finished off her own quartet (AND their vehicle) in record time and then come looking for Wesley out of concern for him, then Wesley's target would have been the sole survivor of the Black Thorns -- which would have taken a lot of the impact away from the clean-sweep message Angel was trying to send. However, a friend in the library suggests that Wesley KNEW Illyria would come looking for him and finish what he'd started . . . which would take that hint of sabotage or defeatism out of his own desire to cease the struggle.
However, if it was Wesley's unconscious mind that decided it was time for him to move on from this vale of tears, without the knowing consent of his conscious mind, then in Wesley's case, as in Anne's and Gunn's, we could say that loyalty survived the death of hope. Wesley's hope may have been gone, but loyalty to Angel kept him putting one foot in front of the other, to arrive at the battle that he didn't consciously realize would be his last. The problem was that, just beyond his conscious awareness, his loyalty to Fred was pulling him in another direction, calling him to embark upon a different journey, that they two might be together again.
(Yes, I'm hoping that Illyria-Fred wasn't JUST telling Wesley what he wanted to hear as he lay dying in her arms, and that, even if Fred's soul was beyond the powers of all earthly magicks to restore, that soul DOES exist in some transcended state, somewhere, where Wes's poor, tired soul can join with her once more. I'm a hopeFUL romantic, as Joan Wilder might say, when it comes to joyous reunions in the hereafter if not before.)
As far as Lorne's hope and loyalty are concerned, I'd argue (briefly, because while working on this post I've come up against the closing time in two separate libraries, and I'm now in one of my campus offices, racing against the fact that I haven't eaten since breakfast and it's now past supper-time) that in his case, also, loyalty towards Angel and the others seems to have outlived his hope or faith that they were the good guys and accomplishing something good for this world. However, Lorne seems NOT to have given up ALL hope -- that's why he said he wouldn't rejoin the Angel crew in the alley, or anywhere else. If he had no more hope, what would it matter to him where he died? But if he still had the capacity to feel THAT soul-sick and disappointed by what their mission had turned into and what his fearless leader was demanding of him, then -- I'd like to think -- Lorne must still have had the hope or at least a glimmering of faith that SOMEWHERE there must be something better, something more redemptive, or simply more livable, for him. Lorne must have still had the capacity to HOPE that he might hope again, at some point in the future.
Or at least that's what I'd like to think.
(no subject)
Your hope vs loyalty discussion resonates deeply with me. The first time I watched the Wesley/Illyria scene, my thoughts were along the same lines as yours (but not as eloquent). Deep inside Wes had given up, but his feeling towards Angel (and the mission) kept him going. And then there's also his feelings for Fred pulling him in another direction.
I really like that last paragraph about Lorne. It has all sorts of implications and at the risk of sounding cheesy, it gives me hope.
(no subject)
After all Lorne's suffering and sacrifices, I NEED to believe that there's some hope for him to find a better, or at least more soul-satisfying, future someday, somehow. I need to believe that for all of us, at times.
(no subject)
Vampires are evil. Spike had to go through an extraordinary process of humiliation and emasculation before he began to behave lovingly toward Buffy. Vampires are evil. Spike and Dru are Aurelian, master vampires and come from a line of unpredictable fiends; Harmony is, and was presumably turned by, a flunky. Harmony turned on Cordelia, both dead and alive. Why? COS VAMPIRES ARE EVIL AND SHE WAS ALWAYS A BITCH. /rant
Sorry, I liked this review. Interesting stuff and good thoughts on loyalty. Thanks for sharing it with me. :)
(no subject)
Thanks for the reminder. My problem is that -- although it's only logical and right that vampires should be pure evil if they have no souls -- the way the vampires are PORTRAYED by some of the actors leave room for doubt (they seem so HUMAN, at times).
And even when Spike was full-on, bad-ass, evil-master-vampire-guy who'd sooner murder a human than look at them, he was as loyal as he knew how to be to DRU, at least (though she did not, or could not, reciprocate -- especially once Angelus was back in the picture). As ditzy and shallow and unreliable as Harmony always was, and as prone to disloyalty even BEFORE she was made a vampire, there WERE times when she seemed capable of something approaching loyalty and a desire to be better than she was.
I guess having vampires around (even cute ones) is sort of like what they say about keeping big wild cats as pets: even if you raised them from the time they were tiny cubs, and even if they cuddle up against you now and then, should you fall down and knock yourself unconscious, your grown-up lion or tiger or jaguar will still see you as a piece of meat to be chewed on, rather than a member of its family to be protected. That's just their nature. In the same way, a soulless vampire may be capable of some degree of loyalty to members of its own species, but sooner or later all humans are on the menu.
(no subject)
indeed
::and for the second time in twenty-four hours...ponders the paradox that is Spike::
Angel as antihero
This is all so interesting, it's hard to know where to start commenting. Your comments on Angel's many betrayals, particularly his arranging Lindsay's murder, make me think of the scene at the end of "The Gift" where Giles kills Ben. Ben says something about the fact that Buffy didn't kill him, and Giles replies, "No, she couldn't. She's a hero. Not like us." And then he kills Ben with his own hand.
Fast forward to "Not Fade Away," where Angel doesn't just betray and murder Lindsay, he coldly sends an employee to do it. It's more like something from "The Sopranos" than what we expect on "Angel" or "Buffy." Poisoning an enemy is another pretty non-heroic act. I'd argue that at the end of the series, Angel has in fact become an antihero. He's fighting for good with the tools of evil. Throughout seven seaons of "Buffy," we were always assured that in the long term, you can't get away with that. But here's Angel doing it, and we keep rooting for him.
IMO, the key to his transformation was Illyria's advice, "You must serve only your own ambition." That advice solidified his decision that in order to have a real impact on evil in the world, he has to give up little things like personal morality and his hope of becoming human. I don't get the sense that either was a huge sacrifice for him: He told Spike earlier in the season that he no longer believed in the Shanshu prophecy, and I personally am not at all sure he ever really wanted his humanity back, or he'd have fought harder for it in "I Will Remember You." And personal morality got left behind at least once before, when he left a roomful of (barely) human lawyers locked in with Darla and Drusilla.
He's accepted that he's no longer the guy who rescues girls in alleys. That's not big enough for him anymore. He's the guy who will stop at nothing to slow down the big evil.
To bring it back to your theme of loyalty and hope, he's given up his old hopes (for personal redemption, for becoming human, for a life with Buffy) and his old loyalty (to his friends, his ideals) in favor of a new hope—that he can have a real impact on evil in the world, even if he can't ever stop it.
In fact, it occurs to me that one of the most stirring things about the whole plan set in motion in the last two episodes was the willingness of all the team members to risk eternity in some mega-hell dimension just for the chance to kill off a few of the really, really bad guys. Another thing Angel said earlier in the season was, 'If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do." He's decided that the results of his actions on the world are more important than their impact on himself, And he's somehow convinced the rest of the gang to go (possibly straight to hell) along with him.
Go, Angel! Slay those dragons!
Re: Angel as antihero
Your reference to Giles' "not like us" speech in "The Gift" is VERY appropriate (in fact, it was 'mad' Tara's words as she was leaving the Magic Box that I was trying to reference in my title -- telling Giles he was a killer, out of the blue, and muttering something that sounded to me like "soul-set time"). In a way, Giles' speech to Buffy in the training room earlier in that episode, about his commitment to protect this sorry world, no matter what, including doing the things that other people can't or won't, and shouldn't HAVE to do -- that seems to be where Angel is trying to place himself, at the end of this season (accepting the soul-damage that comes from doing the wrong thing for the right reason as HIS ultimate gift and sacrifice to humanity and the world).
I quite agree with you about Angel not really wanting real, garden-variety humanity anymore (he's come too far, and remarks to Harmony that he can't even remember what it felt like to be human, anymore -- I guess those 24 hours as a mortal in season 1 didn't refresh his memory sufficiently, or else he's repressed the memory as too traumatic) -- the only humanity I think he'd SETTLE for at this point is the kind that Connor has, and since Connor is keeping it safe for him, he has no probs signing away the Shanshu.
"'If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.' He's decided that the results of his actions on the world are more important than their impact on himself, And he's somehow convinced the rest of the gang to go (possibly straight to hell) along with him."
An excellent point, and harking back to "Epiphany" in season 2, when (after walking a little too far over on the dark side since the moment he left all those lawyers to die in the cellar) he told Kate of the 'epiphany' he'd received, at what should have been his moment of maximum discouragement.
Thanks for the great connections you've made. After reading these comments I just had to 'friend' you, so I could read some more.
more on hope and loyalty from a RL friend
"'But, if Wesley really did (consciously, or unconsciously) set out to get himself killed that night, simply because he had nothing left in this world to HOPE for or live for..., then we're faced with the possibility that the destruction of his hope also rendered his loyalty shaky, since his own death threw the success of the whole mission into jeopardy.'
"As to Wesley, I am sad to say, I think in the end he was without hope, but willing to die because it was asked of him. Even in his myriad betrayals, he fought hard because he thought he was doing something right for the future. Without Fred, and without the friends he figured wouldn't last the night, he was ready to die. He was tired of fighting the fight.
"As for Lorne. He is the one I really see as having lost the most hope. Like Wesley, he takes the easier way out. He leaves his friends because in the end, he doesn't want to see more death. He doesn't know anymore where the lines can be drawn. He has no more hope or faith in those who are around him. He, who can read someone, can no longer tell good from bad. Wasn't there something about him reading the jerk who was responsible for Fred's death [Knox]? In a way, the one who sees in a magical way, while Xander could see in a mortal way, was left in a sense blind.
"Does hope have to necessarily be hope for the self? I don't know that I would argue that they had all lost hope and were running on loyalty. I think that even if they died, they had hope that they made some sort of difference by fighting the good fight. By showing Gunn with Anne, we saw the good that Angel and the MoG ('Ministers of Grace' -- TWOP) accomplished even though they hadn't won the war. And Anne hasn't won the war.
"Hope isn't about the winning, it's about being a part of a longer process whether or not you are alive to see the end result. You keep fighting the good fight, and those you touch will carry on your work. For every Kate (who washed out) they touched, there was an Anne who picked up the mantle. Even though only the earthly connections of the senior partners in the Black Thorns died, it was a significant blow - a part of the longer term process of the apocalypse. By weakening WR and H, they give the Scoobies and the Slayer network an advantage. In a sense, win or lose this particular battle, they will help Buffy and company win the war. That's hope.
"And might I add to the Wesley thing, he never could act alone. Even in betrayal he turned to the Watchers Council, or Holtz, or Illyria.
"In the end, when he was supposed to be able to act alone, Illyria was the one who fought his good fight for him."