Spikeylover vid and tangential musing

[shipperx]

spikeylover  has a new spuffy vid up: http://www.livejournal.com/users/spikeylover/75237.html

And I noticed all the quotes that she had used to introduce the vid.  Reading them, I was struck by just how much ME was going for an almost Wuthering Heights relationship with Spuffy. . .well, except that unlike Catherine Earnshaw, they didn't want Buffy to see it as love.  And, of course, Spike was actually a far, far better man than Heathcliff.  Spike's love inspired him to change for the better whereas Heathcliff succumbed to darker instincts in reaction to Cathy's abuses, thereby becoming an angry, vengeful abuser himself.  Spike chose to try to be a better man.  Still, I do tend to see Buffy in a very Catherine Earnshaw light.  I think Cathy and Buffy are very much the same woman.

Anyway, reading the Spuffy quotes of spikeylover, I was struck by how eerily similar they are to some Wuthering Heights quotes/ideas:

• "It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." Chapter 9, pg. 73
• "Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes..." Chapter 3
• "Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves."
, pg. 22
• "He had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in such marks of affection on him." Chapter 8, pg. 61
• "Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home." Chapter 11, pg. 103
• "I want to crawl to her feet, whimper to be forgiven, for loving me, for needing her more than my own life, for belonging to her more than my own soul."
• "Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being." Chapter 9, pg. 74
• "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary."

How very Spuffy.  And yet, even Spuffy wasn't as destructive as Heathcliff and Cathy.  Then again, Spike was a better man than Heathcliff--even if ME didn't see it that way.  (Although, I really don't think Buffy was any better than Cathy.  Buffy pretty much WAS Cathy... at least IMHO.)

ETA: I know that Wuthering Heights is seen as a fucked up romance, and that Bronte intended it as a grand passion whereas ME... No. I'll never believe that ME meant to create any grand passion (other than twisted and hot) between Spuffy. They didn't see Spuffy as a romance... then again I don't see Wuthering Heights as a romance. But overlooking ME's intent to see what they actually put on screen. I see similarities (and differences. Spuffy are better than Cathy/Heathcliff because they didn't create anywhere near as much collateral damage, and because Spike chose to go get his soul rather than the Heathcliff choice which would have been to destroy the Scoobs. So, no, Spike isn't Heathcliff, IMO. But some of the dynamics of the Spuffy relationship seem close to WH... especially Buffy's mindset.

Comments

[rahirah]

The big difference was that Cathy's author was quite conscious that Cathy was, in her way, just as terrible a person as Heathcliff was--there WAS supposed to be a connection, a similarity between them. Whereas for ME, Buffy was just slumming.

[spikeylover.livejournal.com]

It didn't occur to me, but I think even more than Scarlett/Rhett I believe they are paired after these obsessive lovers.

Wow.

[shapinglight]

Can see exactly where you're coming from with this - and there's not doubt at all that Spike was a better man than Heathcliff.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. Bronte holds Cathy up as a capricious and selfish creature who wrecks as much damage as the vengeful Heathcliff (and though I really love the novel, I never see it as a romance but a destructive relationship). Nor do I think ME say the relationship of Spuffy as a relationship in any heartfelt terms (until they were cornered into giving a few scraps). But Cathy IS Buffy in so, so, SO many ways. . .even if it wasn't intentional.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think there's some Rhett and Scarlett in it in that Spike (like Rhett) sees Buffy (like Scarlett) for exactly what she is and loves her anyway. And I see the end as similar as well, where Rhett finally is broken in the relationship, he can have no more of it and survive and so he leaves, and Scarlett blithely believes that she can go on and there are no changes. Anything she wants she can have if she works at it. She doesn't reflect much on the damage that SHE caused and that maybe she really did burn him out.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Spike is no Heathcliff in that he ultimately reacts very differently than Heathcliff. Unlike Heathcliff, Spike never takes his relationship angst out on bystanders. It's the collateral damage in Wuthering Heights that makes both Heathcliff and Cathy so reprehensible. Spuffy damage was primarily INTERNAL with each other, they saved the world. So in that respect Spuffy aren't equivalent to Heathcliff and Cathy. And Spike is less equivalent to Heathcliff than Buffy is to Cathy. But in relationship dynamics... Buffy is SO Catherine Earnshaw.

[shapinglight]

Sadly, I'm pretty sure that's not what Joss intended us to see at the end of the show.

Oh, well - wouldn't surprise me if he never really bothered watching season 7 all the way through anyway. Too busy with Firefly.

[spikeylover.livejournal.com]

And the Ashley/Angel parallels.. Dont forget that.. Idealizing a man that she doesn't really know, while scoffing at the man who she could be truly happy with.

I do think Scarlett/Buffy loved Rhett/Spike at the end, but it was too late for them.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Given how sadly deluded ME was about Hunchback of NotreDame, they probably have no clue whatsoever about Wuthering Heights. Hell, knowing ME... they'd probably equate it to Bungel, which just is in no way comparitive because the whole thing is based on Cathy looking DOWN on Heathcliff and Buffy was always hopelessly infatuated with Angel. But misinterpretation is pretty much what I expect from ME.

[shapinglight]

Maybe we're looking for comparisons in the wrong place?

Trying to think of comic book stories that compare now.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wouldn't bother looking there, either. ME was pretty ignorant about comics, all told - case in point, the Spider-Man discussion in "Flooded." If one were honestly interested in doing a story about how a superhero pays his or her bills, then Spider-Man is the last example to use, because anyone who thought about this for more than a second would realize that Spider-Man makes his money not from charging people, but from taking pictures of himself as Spider-Man and selling them, a detail that even made it into the Spider-Man movies, for gossakes. So following up on the practical lives of heroes was not a story they were interested in doing - it's been done in other places, quite brilliantly, like Chickenman, which points out that a cape and tights aren't ideal for carrying one's wallet and keys, or even Batman, which logically posits that a guy with all those gadgets must reasonably have a fortune at his disposal. BtVS only flirted with the superhero world. It wasn't interested in any way in taking a serious look at it. (More examples: where Buffy keeps her stakes, why Warren would still be a penniless slacker if he could build a lifelike robot... it goes on and on.)

Sorry - long digression from the initial Heathcliff/Cathy parallel, but it's all in service of leading back to where I think BtVS really did draw its influences from in making its stories, and it's TV itself, and its ever-prevalent genre conventions. The B/S romance played as the sort of sordid soap opera one sees on daytime TV, only with more self-importance attached... when in actuality, the only real separating liine between the two was JW's obsession with the good ol' genre of melodramatic tragedy. Try on almost any pre-code silent film, and you'll see the Jossverse's roots in spades. And a lot of those films were based on, or insipred by... exacly the kind of stories of the Heathcliff/Cathy school. Little moral lessons for us all. Only with B/S, the moral lesson was... sort of forgotten about. Or at the very least, wildly off-kilter.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Right there with you. There was more than a little ghost of "frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" bleeding into those last few Spike appearances, from "let's go be heroes" to "No, you don't."

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read Spike's reactions in End of Days and in Chosen to be very like Rhett's after Melanie died. It was just one bridge too far. Hope that she would change and that their relationship would change had died, and damnit, she just burned the relationship out. There comes a point where you just can't go one as you are, and Spuffy reached that point. And there was little hope of Buffy ever changing. So there you go. That's how they ended at "No, you don't, but thanks for saying so." He'd lost the ability to believe in them.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Actually it isn't even soap opera love -- which specializes in "Redemptive love" stories. You just don't get the "love hurts so bad and is terrible so we destroy one another" stories on soaps (at least not deliberately). Soaps sell starcrossed romance which tends to mean that the lovers are all so devoted to one another, and the bad girl or bad guy is always redeemed by the love of a good man/ good woman but there's always some schemer getting in the way, or some villain bent on revenge, or fate kills one of them and replaces them with a twin, or someone gets amnesia. But they don't do the Jossian story of "Love is pain. Love is death. We will destroy one another" that Joss tells.

It's not that the Jossian characters are starcrossed. It's that they are mutually destructive. It's not that a curse broke Buffy and Angel up, it's that she lost her virginity and he destroyed her innocence in every way. He broke her in a way she never quite fixed and it was ultimately HIM that did it, not just the curse. And you have Willow/Tara with Willow mindraping Tara. Or Xander/Anya where he constantly belittles her. And then you have the tragic case of Spuffy where they just DESTROY each other with use and abuse.

It's a different mindset. Soaps sell soapy fluff of. Starcrossed, sure, but the underlying sentiment is kookily idealistic. Joss had some deep, deep cynicism bordering on just plain ugliness.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Soaps sell starcrossed romance which tends to mean that the lovers are all so devoted to one another, and the bad girl or bad guy is always redeemed by the love of a good man/ good woman

I'll buy that. That fits with my own experience with daytime TV, which I'll admit is a little limited - some All My Children back when SMG was still on (totally coincidentally), and General Hospital and Dark Shadows, back in the day. But I also remember a lot of they-are-meant-2B-OMG stories that were sort of rammed down viewers' throats - I only really watched AMC regularly for about one year, and got thoroughly sick of Dixie and Tad in that time. Yikes! So that's probably coloring a bit of my idea of daytime television as also having a tendency toward coloring some relationships as "good" and some as "bad" whether the audience agrees or not.

the underlying sentiment is kookily idealistic

Yep, agreed. "Love will find a way" just suffuses the soap world. Which is a sweet view, in a lot of ways, even if it does get a little freaky in some cases.

It's not that the Jossian characters are starcrossed. It's that they are mutually destructive.

Oh my yes. This is where he diverges from the melodramatic ideal, actually - those tragedies were usually based on terrible circumstance, and there was always a moral lesson to be drawn, such as "if you peddle yourself on the streets, even if it's to pay your mother's doctor bills, the day will come when the respectable man you love will be horrified to discover that you were jailed for being a prostitute and reject you... but then he will forgive you, because your heart is truly pure, and he's learned a lesson about forgiveness, and you never actually had a customer before you were arrested, so you weren't guilty after all." It was totallly drummed-up angst - like the Jossverse - but the funny little moral lesson of "stay pure" was the eventual point. JW never really had a point in his relationship stories. They were just tragic for no reason. Because... no one should ever be happy, ever. And I think the reason he did it that way was almost intentionally a reaction to the more kindly "love will find a way" mindset you'll find in other places on TV, including soaps. He just seemed to want to insist that reality is all about the ugliness, and not admit that light could honestly get in through love for more than a brief, flickering moment. And that's just... sad.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

That was my reaction to "End of Days" too. I remember feeling the break, right at that moment at the door. They were done. There was no future.

[shapinglight]

That's very interesting - and where Buffy/Spike comes from, you're undoubtedly right. For one thing, the idea seems to have been principally Marti's, and she came to BtVS from soap operas, didn't she?

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Those quotes are eerily good. And I agree that Spike is better than Heathcliff, but to be fair to Buffy, she balances up better than Cathy too, since all Cathy does is spread destruction and pain through her selfishness whereas Buffy is doing a hell of a lot of good in the world, despite her poor behaviour to Spike.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't think she actually comes from soaps. I think she has been confused with Agnes Nixon, the writer who created "All My Children" and "One Life to Live." It's the similarity in names, but a real disservice to Nixon who in addition to being several decades older than Marti, is also far, far, FAR less screwed up.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

While I think Buffy is very similar to Cathy emotionally/relationship-wise. I do give her credit for not being as capricious about everyone as Cathy was. Cathy really has little in the way of admirable qualities. Buffy is physically brave and dutiful. She's a "good little soldier" if not the greatest person. To steal a quote, she would be a good fireman when the floods rolled back.

And Spuffy also never dragged collateral damage into their relationship which definitely makes them better people than Cathy and Heathcliff.

[shapinglight]

Oh, glad to know that.

Still think it's ironic that JM, when asked which of the BtVS women he'd like to be stranded on a desert island with , I think during the season 5/6 hiatus, said Marti.

Little did he know what she had in store for him.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

::Pats JM:: Poor, trusting sod.