Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Circumstances, however, continue to throw them together. He proves to be loyal and trustworthy. Her feelings, perhaps never entirely subdued, re-awaken and she falls in love. They sleep together. After she does so, he goes through a psychotic episode in which he reverts to the torture and murder of innocents, including people she knows. Forced now to act, she is able to have him committed to a mental hospital for treatment of his psychotic episode.

  Under circumstances which are unclear, he leaves the mental hospital and returns to her, claiming again to be cured. He again performs actions which indicate he is trustworthy.

  Stopping the narrative at this point, let us ask some questions.

  1. Is it plausible that a girl in such a case would not think some punishment was in order for the man?

  2. Is it plausible that she would continue to express love and concern for him?

  Now, I think I have given an entirely neutral and impartial (;)) summary of S2-3 which follows your metaphor but puts it in real life terms. I can't make it plausible. I think the soul must mean something more essential in order for Buffy's behavior to be justifiable.”

  To summarize, I opt for Masq’s option #1, though incorporating some elements of her #2, because I see the soul in BtVS as providing an “essence” to a person. Angel with the soul is essentially different than without it, i.e., when he’s Angelus. When I say “essentially different”, I’m limiting that difference to the soul. It’s obvious that the demon retains basic personality traits of the departed human. Thus, when Buffy tells Willow in Passion that Angel’s “not the same guy”, Willow can respond that he is in one sense because “all he ever thinks of is you”. The specific obsessions and character flaws remain those set by the dead victim. As writer David Fury put it in a Zap2it interview on February 9, 2001, “We feel like there's a ghost of the person you once were inside them -- a philosophical ghost, not an actual spirit. It is, in fact, a demon, but the demon is infused with some of the characteristics of the people that they possess.”

  It’s the human substrate which guides the crimes committed. That is what causes the demon to pick this victim over that one, to artistically torture and murder rather than to face a mob with just fists and fangs. But though the specific characteristics of the vampire’s actions can be traced to the human, the fact of the act itself cannot. It wasn’t Angel’s human self which murdered his family (Angel), it was the vampire Angelus. Angel didn’t torture Drusilla and drive her insane, Angelus did. The essence of Angel, the soul which restrained his evil desires, wasn’t there.

  In my view Angel is not responsible for the crimes of Angelus. However, Angel feels responsible because he shares the same body and memories as Angelus, and because Angelus exploited precisely those weaknesses that Angel knows he has. The body, including the brain, contains the memories and emotions. The soul is immersed in the body and therefore is privy to those memories and emotions, whether it was present to create them or not. Angel remembers the crimes of Angelus as his own and the emotional impact of Angelus’ crimes would affect Angel; that’s what the gypsy curse was all about: “You have no idea what it’s like to have done the things I’ve done and to care.” (Angel)

  In comments, State of Siege made an excellent point about Angel’s feeling of responsibility: “One of the things I love about Amends is that it shows that while the ensouled vampire might feel responsibility for—and indeed deeply regret—his past crimes, he can still feel their pleasures... I would argue that what Angel flees, what tortures him the most during the episode is not the reminder of his crimes—he lives with them daily, hence the trademark brooding—but the revivification of their pleasures through the magicks of the Bringers (not that he does not otherwise remember them, but that the spells make them inescapably vivid). That he did them he knows—but that he enjoyed them and, on some level, continues to enjoy them, the demon not being dead, only kept in check—that is for him the thing insupportable.”

  Ok, that’s where I’m coming from on this, but remember from my post on Revelations that I also believe Buffy takes this same position. I’ll get into some arguments pro and con below, but I need to be very upfront about one important point first. My theory that the soul provides an “essence” directly contradicts the fundamental premise of existentialism. Existentialism was designed to be the exact opposite of the philosophy of “essentialism”, which argues for an “essence” which makes us human from the beginning. Existentialists deny the existence of any such “essence”. For them, we exist first and create our own “essential self” by the choices we make in the life we live. The phrase used to express this is “existence precedes essence”.

  After all the emphasis I’ve put on Joss and existentialism in these essays, I’m now in the position of saying that Joss created a “soul canon” which undercuts his own philosophy at its most fundamental point. And that his hero is the biggest proponent of this essentialist doctrine.

  Well, yeah. Sartre and Camus were atheists; they rejected the very concept of “soul”. Once Joss reintroduced the soul into the show, it became impossible to follow existentialism on every single point. I want to emphasize that this is not a criticism of Joss. For all I know, Joss doesn’t consider himself an existentialist on this particular point. The show Dollhouse might suggest that he doesn’t, though I don’t want to get too far into the brambles of philosophical debate about a different show (I’m in too far on this one).

  Even if he does take that view in his personal life, he isn’t Jean Paul Sartre or Albert Camus, who were philosophers writing novels in order to communicate an intellectually rigorous philosophical system. Joss is a storyteller who has been influenced by philosophy. He makes use of the philosophy, but it doesn’t bind him. If the story requires it, I expect the philosophy to yield (just as the plot sometimes does in his works). And there’s no denying that he told a wonderful story indeed in S2. The fact that Joss is a storyteller means that he contains multitudes within him. If the immediately preceding episode can feature a leap of faith which absurdist philosophy rejects, and if an atheist can write a Christmas miracle, an existentialist can write an essentialist story.

  Philosophy aside, it’s time to consider the evidence from within the show and the arguments on either side. I’ll begin with what the text gives us. Following are the relevant passages from the episodes we’ve seen thus far so you can see them all in one place:

  “Xander: So vampires are demons?

  Giles: The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the demon's soul.” The Harvest.

  “Xander: We've gotta get in there before Jesse does something stupider than usual.

  Giles: You listen to me! Jesse is dead! You have to remember that when you see him, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him.” The Harvest.

  Buffy: (to Giles) Can a vampire ever be a good person? Couldn't it happen?

  Giles: A vampire isn't a person at all. (clears his throat) It may have the movements, the, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway.” Angel.

  “Angel: When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an easy way to live. You have no idea what it's like to have done the things I've done... and to care. I haven't fed on a living human being since that day.

  Buffy: So you started with my mom?

  Angel: I didn't bite her.

  Buffy: Then why didn't you say something?

  Angel: But I wanted to. I can walk like a man, but I'm not one.” Angel.

  “Ford: …I will become immortal.

  Buffy: Well, I've got a news flash for you, braintrust: that's not how it works. You die, and a demon sets up shop in your old house, and it walks, and it talks, and it remembers your life, but it's not you.” Lie to Me.

  “Buffy: Angel, there mu
st be some part of you inside that still remembers who you are.

  Angelus: Dream on, schoolgirl.

  Xander takes the cross from Jenny and starts toward Angelus.

  Angelus: Your boyfriend is dead. You're all gonna join him.” Innocence.

  “Buffy: Do you remember my ex-boyfriend, the vampire? I slept with him, he lost his soul, now my boyfriend's gone forever, and the demon that wears his face is killing my friends.” IOHEFY.

  I believe I’ve now quoted all the relevant passages from the series to date, and they all say exactly the same thing: the vampire is no longer the person s/he once was. The vampire may be affected by the personality of the dead victim, but there’s something missing which differentiates the two.

  In the context of the show, this must be true. If a vampire were “the same” as the person s/he once was, then having Buffy automatically slay every vampire would be problematic, to say the least. It would be as if she were to slay Oz, something both she and Giles agree would be wrong. If it weren’t true, then Buffy would love Angelus just as she does Angel. I take it that no one would argue for that.

  That’s one side of the coin, of course. The other side is whether the souled vampire is “the same” as the vampire. Obviously Buffy doesn’t think so, otherwise she’d have slain Angel herself as Xander told her to do in Angel, and she wouldn’t have phrased it the way she did in the passage from IOHEFY which I quoted.

  The issue goes beyond Buffy’s view, though. It’s absolutely critical to the storyline since the episode Angel that Angel be seen as in a separate category. If Angel were exactly identical to Angelus, then Buffy should slay him, not fall in love with him, and the whole storyline would fall apart. If Angel is not exactly identical to Angelus, then we have to decide where the difference lies. He’s not human; on that we can agree. But he’s not vampire either.

  Given these two facts, it seems to me that the only available conclusion is that the souled vampire has an essential difference from all other vampires. The obvious difference is the soul, which Joss has described as functioning like a conscience. That is, the presence of the human soul enables someone to distinguish right from wrong. Without it, and having a demon soul instead, the vampire can’t make that distinction. To me, this means that the souled vampire can’t be held morally responsible for the acts of the unsouled creature he was before his soul was restored – the feature which makes moral choice possible was missing.

  The argument on the other side, as I understand it, relies on two key points. One is the storyline, as Masq alluded to in her description of the two sides. Angel wants to do something to be redeemed; that was why he followed Whistler in Becoming. If he doesn’t actually need redemption, then this story isn’t all that compelling. My explanation – that the need is psychological rather than moral – strikes some people as detracting from the power of a redemptionist story.

  The other key point is that, as I’ve agreed, the demon which takes over builds on characteristics which were already present in the individual. Since those characteristics were already present in the human, the souled vampire will see that his former human self bears responsibility for the evil done in pursuit of those ends. I’ll let shadowkat explain this in more detail (edited to remove spoilers):

  “Also, we're talking metaphor here, so I don't see why the physical should equate so strictly. Vampires are a metaphor for unrestrained hunger, desire, id. While the id does have a role in terms of creating identity, and is certainly necessary at a certain level for survival, when not balanced by other parts of one's identity, problems result -mainly immaturity. That is what the vampires represent.

  Id gives the motivation to live - the desire to eat, drink, take pleasure etc. Those things aren't intrinsically bad, they just are. It's when those desires are frustrated in some way, or we refuse to grow out of that stage that id becomes a problem. If vampires could feed without hurting humans, would they be evil and would there be a need for a slayer? …

  In terms of the growth of identity, accomodating one's darker impulses, containing them without harming others is an important part of learning who one is. To be unconscious of our impulses or deny they are a problem, as a vampire usually does, stymies the process of self-knowledge. …Choice is important and operative here. Choice means becoming conscious, not being a victim of one obsessions and compulsions. He got back his 'moral compass' in Joss' terms, but that does not mean he lost the identity of the last 100+ years ... I don't see why his soul would negate the identity he created as a vampire. … Soul does not equal identity.

  I believe it is possible to change and transform oneself. One can become the person one wishes to be by changing what one does every day to ensure that it conforms to that person. Living and being (to me) are conscious decisions -one's desired identity is won and lost every day with a myriad of actions. Part of the reason that I find BtVS so compelling is because it shows us every episode that it is a struggle and that it is possible.”

  If you find the metaphor compelling in the way she explains, the identity of the two creatures makes for a gripping storyline.

  Since I let Masq set up the problem, I’ll let her have the last word (here SPOILER WARNING for link; spoilers removed from quote below):

  “Angel's dilemma is both compelling and perplexing. In one respect, his situation is not so hard to understand. He has a conscience and human emotions, but a demon physiology drives him, and he must fight it. In another respect, Angel's situation raises confounding questions about guilt and responsibility. The show has been fairly clear that upon siring, Angel's human soul was banished to the Ether. Nevertheless, in Lie to Me, Angel "confesses" to Buffy the truth about "his" siring of Drusilla. Does this mean he thinks the human soul is responsible for this horrible act? But how could that be so, since the human soul wasn't even present at the time? In Amends, Angel distanced himself from the acts of the demon when he told the First Evil that "It wasn't me."

  “And there lies the rub: "It wasn't me" "It was me"--who is the "me" doing the talking? The "Angel" we know is both the demon who did the bad deeds and the human soul that didn't. So what is their relationship to each other? Are we talking about

  1. two consciousnesses in one body taking turns being in control, like some sort of multiple-personality guy?, or

  2. a single, combined consciousness at once both demon and human? or

  3. a split consciousness, two consciousness both aware simultaneously, just not of each other, or

  4. one consciousness--the human's--spurred on by the mindless drives of a vampire physiology?

  “Angel has "memories" of his mortal life (as Liam of Galway), of Angelus' deeds, and of his days as a souled vampire. This would seem to indicate the second of these choices. But it's not quite that simple. Option number four is also close to the truth, and fits well with Joss' "drug addict" analogy for Angel's condition:

  “Whedon said that the character of Angel … was intended as a metaphor for an alcoholic in recovery. Angel, like many recovering addicts, is making amends for what he did "under the influence" (Hercules, Ain’t It Cool News, March 4, 2001).

  “I always thought of Angel's "soul" as the conscience and goodness of a person or put another way his "control" over doing the evil within all of us, so to speak. The "demon" that comes with being a vampire is what he is controlling and denying the light of day (pardon the pun). So, Angel is always there, regardless of the "demon" aspect pushing towards the commitment of horrible things (i.e. killing Ms. Calendar) ...but when he gets his soul back, he realizes how horrible the things he did are and thus feels all the guilt. I don't think the soul ever goes away, it just gets locked up inside, out of a controlling position (W. R. Terrell 4:17pm Oct 19, 1999).

  “The "soul" that left Liam of Galway's body upon death/vamping (and Angel when the Gypsy curse was reversed) was just one part of his personality--namely, his conscience. Everything else that made up the human Liam's personality remained behind. Which means that "Angelus" is m
erely Liam of Galway with a demon physiology and without a conscience (and the same would be true for all other vampires). This is supported by the fact that Angelus was sadistic and sociopathic, in other words, he lacked empathy.

  “As for memories being what's left of the person controlled by the demon, aren't memories what make up who we are? Someone i forget who said that we are the sum of our memories. ...(16:53:24 ) I think [Angel's memories] had an effect on the "person" Angelus was. ...The person Angel was had, through the parts left when the demon took over the first time, an influence on how the demon acted. The "person" Angel was when he lost his soul in Surprise had an influence on the demon Angelus and his acts (Lady Bathory, Dec 20 16:14 1998).

  “If this is the proper view of the Buffyverse soul, then the received story about vampires being "a human body possessed by a demon 'soul'" in The Harvest would have to be dismissed as Watcher mythology, and everything we've learned about vampires would have to be explained according to such a view, …. This theory does have the merit of being a simpler, more elegant understanding of complex metaphysical situations like Liam-Angelus-Angel….”

  So, the official philosopher disagrees with me too.

  If you take my view, the issues of redemption and forgiveness simply don’t arise. If you disagree with me, though, they do. In that case the show is raising important questions about the nature of redemption. Among those questions are: (1) Can atonement ever be made for crimes which are so horrifying and numerous? (2) What form would that atonement take? After all, nothing can restore Angelus’ dead victims. Does saving others count?