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shipperxIn my Bloodsucker Poll, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rahirah's comment led me to respond with a few of my issues with Eric Northman (Am I the only one who laughs a little at Northman = Viking? Just me? *crickets*) Anyway, my issues with True Blood's Eric Northman, let me show you them...
I don't know him, and I don't understand him.
Really, it's just that simple. The actor is good looking. Eric is the anti-Bill Compton which, more often than not, is a really good thing. Eric is a Viking which is totally cool. Eric is hot. But, and here's the thing, Eric is an alien to me.
What do I mean by that? Well, first off, let me say that I haven't read the books. Perhaps this problem doesn't exist in the books. I'm just talking about the TV show and what has been shown to date. Up until now, Eric is opaque. I have no clue what makes him tick: not what he cares about, not what drives him, not what he loves or what he hates. I don't know why he deals 'V' or how he feels about being sheriff. The only thing I know with any certainty is that he cared about his sire. But, other than that, he's kind of a blank slate we can project anything onto. We don't know him well at all. Now, there's nothing particularly wrong with that in the framework of the show. I can easily see having a vampire be an enigmatic, detached character that views humans such as Sookie with the interest of an entomologist studying ants (which is the vibe I get when he stares so intently at her. I don't see love. I don't even see lust. I see an image of meditative 'Hmmmm...' as he looks at something completely foreign to him. Honestly, it's a bit of the same feeling I get when Spike stares at Buffy on the dance floor in School Hard. 'A slayer with friends...' that wasn't in the manual). At any rate, I'm just not going to be particularly fannish about a character that I don't really understand in an emotional way where I cannot figure out their motivation. I tend to become fannish about characters that I can endlessly dissect, ones who give me fodder to figure out why they do what they do, ones who behave according to emotions that I can comprehend... which led me to think of the BtVS episode Fool for Love and to appreciate anew why that episode is truly awesome.
Every now and then you see posters claim to have loved "Season 2" Spike, bemoaning his woobification or the retconning of Spike in Season 5 (which I don't believe was a retcon. Dude, the "Love's Bitch" aspect was part of the character from the moment Drusilla walked in the door in School Hard) I honestly don't understand those POVs. (People are free to have the views. I just don't understand them).
Well, that's not precisely true. I can understand that POV if the utmost desire is to reserve humanity for other characters. Prior to "Fool for Love" Spike is just a better realized version of Eric Northman, a hot and/or cool mostly distant alien-figure (and being enigmatic is a necessary ingredient to preserve an image of uber-cool. To humanize and texturize a character is to show flaws and emotion, to give us access to their inner selves and to allow us to understand and empathize. To humanize a character is to knock off some of the 'cool.')
Fool for Love is the episode that literally humanizes Spike. Prior to FFL we have no clue to Spike's origins. That isn't saying that we had no clues at all to Spike. We knew various details such as his love of 80s punk music, the accent, and the whole "I may be love's bitch..." behavior. And we knew that there were chinks in his armor. We even knew that 'cool' meant something to him when he was so very, very bothered about being forced to wear a Hawaiian shirt. The thing that we didn't have was context. By revealing William, FFL finally provides a unifying context.
Going back to Eric Northman for a minute, one of my complaints with Eric is that I keep feeling that little that I see of him is real. It's image. I always come away feeling that he's deliberately affecting an image. Frankly, my thought when first seeing him sitting on a throne in Fangtasia with his long blond hair draped 'just so' was 'what a poseur!' I was looking for what is real in the character beyond the image he projects, and I still don't know!
The wonderful thing about FFL (and in the format that it used) is that we're shown what is undeniably true about Spike. IT's not 'is this or is this not the real deal?' It is. We know that because there's no filter in it.
There are a few layers in the way that FFL works to reveal Spike.
First, we are shown William. The slight, dreamy, geeky, bullied, poetic William is real. We know that because we are shown that this is not the story that Spike tells about himself. This is a truth that Spike keeps to himself. Because of that, the audience can place faith in it. He isn't pulling one over on us. It's not him massaging the truth. It's who he was, and it's painful to him.
Second, we see Spike lying about William. This is actually something that makes FFL brilliant in humanizing Spike. It's his denial of his past that strangely validates it. We know that what we see isn't the way Spike likes see himself. In fact, he hates it. It embarrasses him. The fact that it's a truth that he'll lie to hide, doesn't just tell us that it's the truth. It tells us that it's a truth that cuts him, that means something to him... still. It must hurt. If it didn't, he wouldn't go to such lengths to re-write it.
So, we are shown Spike in a way that invites both empathy and sympathy. We see William being harassed, rejected, and bullied. Everyone has had moments where we've felt that way, so we can feel a moment of connection with him, of empathy for how he feels. We're invited to spend a moment in his shoes, to be him, to connect with that bit of humanity. This in turn makes makes it possible to sympathize with Spike's urge to fictionalize his past regardless of what we think of his doing so.
Third, because of the way that FFL plays out, we are vividly shown the way that those old -- very human -- hurts still inform Spike's present choices and actions. It gives us an understanding of what motivates him. We are shown not only what motivated him to create the Spike persona, this cool-punk-Slayer-killer image but also why that cool image is important to him. Additionally, we're shown that this continues to actively influence actions that he takes in the present.
Truly, it's a great, nifty piece of characterization. We are given context for this character. In one series of flashbacks juxtaposed against his fictionalizing them and his presently reacting to echoes of them, we are given a roadmap to the inner workings of this character. We know where the character came from. We learn his real social class (both economically and sociologically). We know how these things led him to rebel against them (we see William go from being within a class to hearing him denounce that class as 'toffs'. We know that he was a geek who now tries to project a polar opposite image...even if it requires rewriting himself). We know not only who he was, but who he would like to be... in all its very human contradictions. ("If you could only see me..." "I may be a bad poet, but I'm a good man..." "I see a man, surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength, his vision, his glory...", a guy lying about his past to make himself sound more cool, going out to pursue the Everest of vampires by actively seeking slayers with a goal of becoming the 'coolest' of vamps by being the bad-ass slayer of slayers... which is only part of the truth.) More, with FFL we are given to know where the old hurts lay hidden and how close they are to the surface. And we know how these experiences still do and will continue to influence his reactions, (the pain to fury reaction to Buffy echoing "You're beneath me..." as well as the William-esque reaction to seeing the girl in mournful tears.)
The brilliance of FFL isn't that it gave Spike a back story. It's that it gave Spike a context. It elucidated his psychology. Given knowledge of what drives his need for a certain image, we can look back at his entrance in School Hard and understand his motives in behaving in such a dramatic fashion and why he transformed so quickly to human indulgence the moment Drusilla walked through the door. We understand better why he so dramatically despaired when he was reduced to living in Xander's mother's basement and wearing a geek outfit. We were given not only the who, but the real, private truth, an understanding of the why and a way to anticipate what he might do in the future under certain circumstances. FFL takes a character that has been held at a certain distance and to the side, one we only knew through observations of the exterior, and gave us the inner story. We have both history and motivation. We have context and his internal emotional landscape. This is now a humanized, identifiable, specific character well beyond just an achetype, a nemesis, and an image. We can understand what drives him, why it drives him, what it means to him, how it influences him, and how he rebels against it. This is a three-dimensional character.
I'll never understand the argument that he was somehow 'better' when we only understood him from a distance, from observing the outermost shell (as that was close to all we're given in, say, Season 2.) Sure, there were many things of interest about him in the early going. He was entertaining. And we did have his reactions and thus could create fanwanks from the things that he did. But we were we limited to only observation of the present and what was happening on the outside. We didn't know his context or his emotional construct. We didn't know his personal truth, his regrets, his pains, his history, or his secrets. This isn't a matter of good or bad or woobie or bad-ass. It's about knowing what makes a character tick, of having access to that character such that we know not only what he projects for his exterior but what he hides... and why he does so.
FFL works so well because it shows us what is true about the character of Spike and how that causes him to act and to react -- both in the positive (such as the porch scene) and the negative (his deciding to 'kill the bitch' over an insult). FFL is what gives us a way to actually understand who Spike is beyond where he fits into Buffy's story (which, honestly, given the All About Buffy nature of BtVS, is a rare gift). FFL is really where we're at last given the tools with which to dissect Spike and to understand. Until then we were fanwanking half-blind.
rahirah's comment led me to respond with a few of my issues with Eric Northman (Am I the only one who laughs a little at Northman = Viking? Just me? *crickets*) Anyway, my issues with True Blood's Eric Northman, let me show you them...I don't know him, and I don't understand him.
Really, it's just that simple. The actor is good looking. Eric is the anti-Bill Compton which, more often than not, is a really good thing. Eric is a Viking which is totally cool. Eric is hot. But, and here's the thing, Eric is an alien to me.
What do I mean by that? Well, first off, let me say that I haven't read the books. Perhaps this problem doesn't exist in the books. I'm just talking about the TV show and what has been shown to date. Up until now, Eric is opaque. I have no clue what makes him tick: not what he cares about, not what drives him, not what he loves or what he hates. I don't know why he deals 'V' or how he feels about being sheriff. The only thing I know with any certainty is that he cared about his sire. But, other than that, he's kind of a blank slate we can project anything onto. We don't know him well at all. Now, there's nothing particularly wrong with that in the framework of the show. I can easily see having a vampire be an enigmatic, detached character that views humans such as Sookie with the interest of an entomologist studying ants (which is the vibe I get when he stares so intently at her. I don't see love. I don't even see lust. I see an image of meditative 'Hmmmm...' as he looks at something completely foreign to him. Honestly, it's a bit of the same feeling I get when Spike stares at Buffy on the dance floor in School Hard. 'A slayer with friends...' that wasn't in the manual). At any rate, I'm just not going to be particularly fannish about a character that I don't really understand in an emotional way where I cannot figure out their motivation. I tend to become fannish about characters that I can endlessly dissect, ones who give me fodder to figure out why they do what they do, ones who behave according to emotions that I can comprehend... which led me to think of the BtVS episode Fool for Love and to appreciate anew why that episode is truly awesome.
Every now and then you see posters claim to have loved "Season 2" Spike, bemoaning his woobification or the retconning of Spike in Season 5 (which I don't believe was a retcon. Dude, the "Love's Bitch" aspect was part of the character from the moment Drusilla walked in the door in School Hard) I honestly don't understand those POVs. (People are free to have the views. I just don't understand them).
Well, that's not precisely true. I can understand that POV if the utmost desire is to reserve humanity for other characters. Prior to "Fool for Love" Spike is just a better realized version of Eric Northman, a hot and/or cool mostly distant alien-figure (and being enigmatic is a necessary ingredient to preserve an image of uber-cool. To humanize and texturize a character is to show flaws and emotion, to give us access to their inner selves and to allow us to understand and empathize. To humanize a character is to knock off some of the 'cool.')
Fool for Love is the episode that literally humanizes Spike. Prior to FFL we have no clue to Spike's origins. That isn't saying that we had no clues at all to Spike. We knew various details such as his love of 80s punk music, the accent, and the whole "I may be love's bitch..." behavior. And we knew that there were chinks in his armor. We even knew that 'cool' meant something to him when he was so very, very bothered about being forced to wear a Hawaiian shirt. The thing that we didn't have was context. By revealing William, FFL finally provides a unifying context.
Going back to Eric Northman for a minute, one of my complaints with Eric is that I keep feeling that little that I see of him is real. It's image. I always come away feeling that he's deliberately affecting an image. Frankly, my thought when first seeing him sitting on a throne in Fangtasia with his long blond hair draped 'just so' was 'what a poseur!' I was looking for what is real in the character beyond the image he projects, and I still don't know!
The wonderful thing about FFL (and in the format that it used) is that we're shown what is undeniably true about Spike. IT's not 'is this or is this not the real deal?' It is. We know that because there's no filter in it.
There are a few layers in the way that FFL works to reveal Spike.
First, we are shown William. The slight, dreamy, geeky, bullied, poetic William is real. We know that because we are shown that this is not the story that Spike tells about himself. This is a truth that Spike keeps to himself. Because of that, the audience can place faith in it. He isn't pulling one over on us. It's not him massaging the truth. It's who he was, and it's painful to him.
Second, we see Spike lying about William. This is actually something that makes FFL brilliant in humanizing Spike. It's his denial of his past that strangely validates it. We know that what we see isn't the way Spike likes see himself. In fact, he hates it. It embarrasses him. The fact that it's a truth that he'll lie to hide, doesn't just tell us that it's the truth. It tells us that it's a truth that cuts him, that means something to him... still. It must hurt. If it didn't, he wouldn't go to such lengths to re-write it.
So, we are shown Spike in a way that invites both empathy and sympathy. We see William being harassed, rejected, and bullied. Everyone has had moments where we've felt that way, so we can feel a moment of connection with him, of empathy for how he feels. We're invited to spend a moment in his shoes, to be him, to connect with that bit of humanity. This in turn makes makes it possible to sympathize with Spike's urge to fictionalize his past regardless of what we think of his doing so.
Third, because of the way that FFL plays out, we are vividly shown the way that those old -- very human -- hurts still inform Spike's present choices and actions. It gives us an understanding of what motivates him. We are shown not only what motivated him to create the Spike persona, this cool-punk-Slayer-killer image but also why that cool image is important to him. Additionally, we're shown that this continues to actively influence actions that he takes in the present.
Truly, it's a great, nifty piece of characterization. We are given context for this character. In one series of flashbacks juxtaposed against his fictionalizing them and his presently reacting to echoes of them, we are given a roadmap to the inner workings of this character. We know where the character came from. We learn his real social class (both economically and sociologically). We know how these things led him to rebel against them (we see William go from being within a class to hearing him denounce that class as 'toffs'. We know that he was a geek who now tries to project a polar opposite image...even if it requires rewriting himself). We know not only who he was, but who he would like to be... in all its very human contradictions. ("If you could only see me..." "I may be a bad poet, but I'm a good man..." "I see a man, surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength, his vision, his glory...", a guy lying about his past to make himself sound more cool, going out to pursue the Everest of vampires by actively seeking slayers with a goal of becoming the 'coolest' of vamps by being the bad-ass slayer of slayers... which is only part of the truth.) More, with FFL we are given to know where the old hurts lay hidden and how close they are to the surface. And we know how these experiences still do and will continue to influence his reactions, (the pain to fury reaction to Buffy echoing "You're beneath me..." as well as the William-esque reaction to seeing the girl in mournful tears.)
The brilliance of FFL isn't that it gave Spike a back story. It's that it gave Spike a context. It elucidated his psychology. Given knowledge of what drives his need for a certain image, we can look back at his entrance in School Hard and understand his motives in behaving in such a dramatic fashion and why he transformed so quickly to human indulgence the moment Drusilla walked through the door. We understand better why he so dramatically despaired when he was reduced to living in Xander's mother's basement and wearing a geek outfit. We were given not only the who, but the real, private truth, an understanding of the why and a way to anticipate what he might do in the future under certain circumstances. FFL takes a character that has been held at a certain distance and to the side, one we only knew through observations of the exterior, and gave us the inner story. We have both history and motivation. We have context and his internal emotional landscape. This is now a humanized, identifiable, specific character well beyond just an achetype, a nemesis, and an image. We can understand what drives him, why it drives him, what it means to him, how it influences him, and how he rebels against it. This is a three-dimensional character.
I'll never understand the argument that he was somehow 'better' when we only understood him from a distance, from observing the outermost shell (as that was close to all we're given in, say, Season 2.) Sure, there were many things of interest about him in the early going. He was entertaining. And we did have his reactions and thus could create fanwanks from the things that he did. But we were we limited to only observation of the present and what was happening on the outside. We didn't know his context or his emotional construct. We didn't know his personal truth, his regrets, his pains, his history, or his secrets. This isn't a matter of good or bad or woobie or bad-ass. It's about knowing what makes a character tick, of having access to that character such that we know not only what he projects for his exterior but what he hides... and why he does so.
FFL works so well because it shows us what is true about the character of Spike and how that causes him to act and to react -- both in the positive (such as the porch scene) and the negative (his deciding to 'kill the bitch' over an insult). FFL is what gives us a way to actually understand who Spike is beyond where he fits into Buffy's story (which, honestly, given the All About Buffy nature of BtVS, is a rare gift). FFL is really where we're at last given the tools with which to dissect Spike and to understand. Until then we were fanwanking half-blind.
