Spike... master manipulator?
Mar. 28th, 2007 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxAnd, out of nowhere, a rant on issues long dead:
As these things tend to happen, a discussion on TWOP (not on a BtVS thread because you couldn't pay me to go to that thing) ended up with Spike being dissed (because we all know Spuffy destroyed television and shows they were never on). The gist of the diss was that big bad Spike was "manipulating" poor helpless Buffy and the Scoobs.
I've seen the argument before, but it never rings true to me at all. I mean, I know Buffy liked to say "Why do I let Spike make me do these things?" But I never see that as actual evidence of Spike the manipulator. I tend to see that as Buffy not wanting to have to own that she chooses to do these things. It's far easier to say that he "makes" her than it is for her to admit that she chooses to do something. And, I suppose if one views the series exclusively through Buffy's eyes and take Buffy's word as fact, you come up with Spike the manipulator. It's just that when I look at Spike, I find the accusation somewhat ludicrous.
Spike is a lot of things, many of which aren't good. He was tempermental, reckless, angry, at times petulant and childish, and he -- like anyone -- could be myopic and self-serving. I'm not saying he never would have manipulated anyone for anything ever. I don't think that can ever be said of anyone. But the concept that Spike was a skilled manipulator who manipulated Buffy on a regular basis and warped her will just doesn't work for me. Buffy was no where near dumb enough or vulnerable enough for Spike to manipulate her for more than a minute or two at best.
When I think of manipulation, I tend to think of someone who thinks ahead, someone who clearly sees action and consequence and has some degree of patience in doing the first to anticipate the second. There's a certain gamesmanship to it. Even when it's unconscious manipulation, there's the sense that someone has a 'knack' for it and thus a talent and tendency toward it. If they didn't have the knack of it, they wouldn't be able to fall easily into it even subconsciously.
It's not even a matter of using or not using someone. Buffy -- by her own admission -- was "using" Spike a great deal in Season 6, but I don't consider her to be particularly "manipulative". Oh, there were instances (*cough*Gone*cough*) but, like Spike, Buffy's character wasn't about gamesmanship or forethought. In a pinch she could come up with a plan (a plan that usually sucked and amounted to 'let's go kill things with blunt and/or sharp instruments') but she didn't have the 'knack' for ongoing manipulation. Holtz was a master manipulator. He saw how action X would spin off into result Y. He could think about how people's natures would lead them to react in a certain way. Angelus also had a lot of manipulative power in him. It was in his pursuit of Holtz and in his pursuit of Drusilla. Xander could occasionally be manipulative, from his soul-lie to Buffy in Becoming to his staving off Anya's legitimate questions about whether he really wanted to get married, to his deciding to reveal to Dawn what had happened in Seeing Red.
And I'm not saying that Spike couldn't be manipulative. He was deliberately trying to manipulate in the Yoko Factor. It's not that he has no understanding of cause and effect. It's that in the Yoko Factor we see he really isn't capable of maintaining the effort even when he thinks he should. So how/why would such a person regularly fall into the habit of using it as a method of dealing with issues (much less, as argued in the post that inspired this rant, did he 'get off' on it likening him to a character who gets off on having all the other characters on the show dancing to his tune simultaneously.) ? I argue this isn't really Spike's character.
Spike is the definition of impulsive. He does it because he feels it. He does it because he thinks it. He does it because he doesn't think it through. He does it because it's fun. He does it because he promised. He does it because what choice does he have? He does it becase... oh, what the hell. He's direct in that way. He's not totally a walking id, but he's very id driven. He'll punch you in the face and tell you what he wants in preference to trying to manipulate someone into doing what he wants. But he's not big with gamesmanship.
To me, things which are quite illustrative to Spike's method of problem solving are the scenes such as In the Dark where he brained Angel with a 2X4. He tells Angel that he had a plan -- a great plan -- but he got bored. Same thing with School Hard. He knew what the plan should be, and he got impatient and didn't follow through. There was Lover's Walk as well, where his whole intention to use Xander and Willow to solve his problems turned into a shrug and "they're at the warehouse" when another plan that appealed came along.
It's not that Spike is incapable of planning, manipulation, or forethought, it's just that it's really not his thing. That's not a tactic he readily resorts to, and it's not one that he successfully employs. To think that somehow in Season 6 he went from being the guy who told Adam that it was stupid to leave him [Spike] to plan the whole thing, and who in the space of a single episode all the Scoobs figured out what Spike was trying to manipulate them into, to being a master Svengali who could manipulate Buffy into all sorts of things against her will for months on end strikes me as absurd. Spike could mirror and mimic whatever Buffy communicated she wanted or needed. He could play the dance of dysfunction like no one's business (and so, for that matter, could she). But I don't see Spike as having any actual power to make (or even to convince) Buffy to do much of anything.
It's terribly convenient to say that when she did something that hurt Spike or was against everything he wanted or desired that she was just exercising her own free will, but when she did something that happened to intersect with what he wanted or desired, suddenly he manipulated her into it.
Spike didn't manipulate Buffy in any significant way, IMO. I'm not saying he never said or did a self-serving thing, but to say he managed to play emotional chess enough to get her to do anything of any significance is really giving him more power over her and in their relationship than he ever had. There may have been moments when Spike wished he could manipulate her, but as a way of explaining Season 6, Buffy saying "Spike made her to do things" doesn't even begin to fly with me.
Buffy chose to dance the dance of dysfunction. She got Spike to do things ("Tell me you love me" , for instance) that were painful and terrible for him, but she wasn't particularly manipulative in any ongoing way. Giving someone the chance to act on their dark desires doesn't equal manipulation. Buffy occasionally used Spike's desires for her emotional needs. Spike occasionally did the same to Buffy. But, for all the massive dysfunction, wrong, and hurt, manipulation didn't seem particularly signficant to me. There are a hell of a lot more important issues in the Season 6 madness than that, and not only do I tend to scoff at the "manipulation" excuse, I tend to be a tad contemptuous of it as it seems to be saying that the characters weren't really responsible for their own choices and actions. I think that's the part Season 6 and its aftermath that drives me most crazy.
As these things tend to happen, a discussion on TWOP (not on a BtVS thread because you couldn't pay me to go to that thing) ended up with Spike being dissed (because we all know Spuffy destroyed television and shows they were never on). The gist of the diss was that big bad Spike was "manipulating" poor helpless Buffy and the Scoobs.
I've seen the argument before, but it never rings true to me at all. I mean, I know Buffy liked to say "Why do I let Spike make me do these things?" But I never see that as actual evidence of Spike the manipulator. I tend to see that as Buffy not wanting to have to own that she chooses to do these things. It's far easier to say that he "makes" her than it is for her to admit that she chooses to do something. And, I suppose if one views the series exclusively through Buffy's eyes and take Buffy's word as fact, you come up with Spike the manipulator. It's just that when I look at Spike, I find the accusation somewhat ludicrous.
Spike is a lot of things, many of which aren't good. He was tempermental, reckless, angry, at times petulant and childish, and he -- like anyone -- could be myopic and self-serving. I'm not saying he never would have manipulated anyone for anything ever. I don't think that can ever be said of anyone. But the concept that Spike was a skilled manipulator who manipulated Buffy on a regular basis and warped her will just doesn't work for me. Buffy was no where near dumb enough or vulnerable enough for Spike to manipulate her for more than a minute or two at best.
When I think of manipulation, I tend to think of someone who thinks ahead, someone who clearly sees action and consequence and has some degree of patience in doing the first to anticipate the second. There's a certain gamesmanship to it. Even when it's unconscious manipulation, there's the sense that someone has a 'knack' for it and thus a talent and tendency toward it. If they didn't have the knack of it, they wouldn't be able to fall easily into it even subconsciously.
It's not even a matter of using or not using someone. Buffy -- by her own admission -- was "using" Spike a great deal in Season 6, but I don't consider her to be particularly "manipulative". Oh, there were instances (*cough*Gone*cough*) but, like Spike, Buffy's character wasn't about gamesmanship or forethought. In a pinch she could come up with a plan (a plan that usually sucked and amounted to 'let's go kill things with blunt and/or sharp instruments') but she didn't have the 'knack' for ongoing manipulation. Holtz was a master manipulator. He saw how action X would spin off into result Y. He could think about how people's natures would lead them to react in a certain way. Angelus also had a lot of manipulative power in him. It was in his pursuit of Holtz and in his pursuit of Drusilla. Xander could occasionally be manipulative, from his soul-lie to Buffy in Becoming to his staving off Anya's legitimate questions about whether he really wanted to get married, to his deciding to reveal to Dawn what had happened in Seeing Red.
And I'm not saying that Spike couldn't be manipulative. He was deliberately trying to manipulate in the Yoko Factor. It's not that he has no understanding of cause and effect. It's that in the Yoko Factor we see he really isn't capable of maintaining the effort even when he thinks he should. So how/why would such a person regularly fall into the habit of using it as a method of dealing with issues (much less, as argued in the post that inspired this rant, did he 'get off' on it likening him to a character who gets off on having all the other characters on the show dancing to his tune simultaneously.) ? I argue this isn't really Spike's character.
Spike is the definition of impulsive. He does it because he feels it. He does it because he thinks it. He does it because he doesn't think it through. He does it because it's fun. He does it because he promised. He does it because what choice does he have? He does it becase... oh, what the hell. He's direct in that way. He's not totally a walking id, but he's very id driven. He'll punch you in the face and tell you what he wants in preference to trying to manipulate someone into doing what he wants. But he's not big with gamesmanship.
To me, things which are quite illustrative to Spike's method of problem solving are the scenes such as In the Dark where he brained Angel with a 2X4. He tells Angel that he had a plan -- a great plan -- but he got bored. Same thing with School Hard. He knew what the plan should be, and he got impatient and didn't follow through. There was Lover's Walk as well, where his whole intention to use Xander and Willow to solve his problems turned into a shrug and "they're at the warehouse" when another plan that appealed came along.
It's not that Spike is incapable of planning, manipulation, or forethought, it's just that it's really not his thing. That's not a tactic he readily resorts to, and it's not one that he successfully employs. To think that somehow in Season 6 he went from being the guy who told Adam that it was stupid to leave him [Spike] to plan the whole thing, and who in the space of a single episode all the Scoobs figured out what Spike was trying to manipulate them into, to being a master Svengali who could manipulate Buffy into all sorts of things against her will for months on end strikes me as absurd. Spike could mirror and mimic whatever Buffy communicated she wanted or needed. He could play the dance of dysfunction like no one's business (and so, for that matter, could she). But I don't see Spike as having any actual power to make (or even to convince) Buffy to do much of anything.
It's terribly convenient to say that when she did something that hurt Spike or was against everything he wanted or desired that she was just exercising her own free will, but when she did something that happened to intersect with what he wanted or desired, suddenly he manipulated her into it.
Spike didn't manipulate Buffy in any significant way, IMO. I'm not saying he never said or did a self-serving thing, but to say he managed to play emotional chess enough to get her to do anything of any significance is really giving him more power over her and in their relationship than he ever had. There may have been moments when Spike wished he could manipulate her, but as a way of explaining Season 6, Buffy saying "Spike made her to do things" doesn't even begin to fly with me.
Buffy chose to dance the dance of dysfunction. She got Spike to do things ("Tell me you love me" , for instance) that were painful and terrible for him, but she wasn't particularly manipulative in any ongoing way. Giving someone the chance to act on their dark desires doesn't equal manipulation. Buffy occasionally used Spike's desires for her emotional needs. Spike occasionally did the same to Buffy. But, for all the massive dysfunction, wrong, and hurt, manipulation didn't seem particularly signficant to me. There are a hell of a lot more important issues in the Season 6 madness than that, and not only do I tend to scoff at the "manipulation" excuse, I tend to be a tad contemptuous of it as it seems to be saying that the characters weren't really responsible for their own choices and actions. I think that's the part Season 6 and its aftermath that drives me most crazy.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 09:59 pm (UTC)IF she had broken down in tears and said those things to Tara immediately following the balcony sex, then I might have bought it... but even there, she was already off on her own and away from her friends and he was playing the role she'd put him in ("Hey, if she won't be with me in the light with her friends, then she obviously wants to be in the dark with me.")
But that's not when it was said and done... it was immediately after she'd beat the ever-loving crap out of him and left him lying in an alley. That seems to indicate that the "things" Spike makes her do include beating him to a pulp, which, um... yeah. Obviously, that's his fault. *insert eyeroll here*
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 10:45 pm (UTC)1) She didn't say "what Spike makes me do" in the Tara scene.
2) If she'd looked embarrassed when next she saw Spike in OaFa.
Those two instances make it difficult to think that Buffy was feeling bad for the right things rather than leaving the very big suspicion that she's blaming him for her having lots and lots of sex with him. Which, yeah, I'm not pitying you for that part.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 11:19 pm (UTC)Personally, I do believe she did, but certain aspects of the writing made it very hard to cling to that view. I'd have to guess that the writing staff honestly had no idea what they were really evoking in that scene (based on SdK's comments, I'd say he certainly didn't), and thus never felt the need to respond to it.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 02:56 pm (UTC)That's one thing I respect immensely about the "House" writers; there are things they suck at, but they acknowledge that if the viewers don't get it or hate a character they should like, it's their fault, not the viewers'.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 11:36 pm (UTC)Giving someone the chance to act on their dark desires doesn't equal manipulation.
Thank you, yes. There's something creepy in the way Buffy was written as refusing responsiblity for those actions - I've seen it pointed out many times that if this situation had been gender-reversed it would've been hideously misogynist. Spike is being assigned a sort of femme fatale role, the poisonous harpy that Buffy couldn't resist, and he absorbs all the blame for anything the two of them do. And although I don't think it came off as quite that simple within the show, there always does seem to be an element of the audience that insists on seeing it that way.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 09:53 am (UTC)What sums up the whole Buffy/Spike relationship in season 6 for me vis-a-vis the maninipulation thing, is when Buffy says to Holden Webster in season 7, "I let him take me over completely" with emphasis on the first three words.
Okay, maybe Spike tried to manipulate her in the rather unformed way you mention (and certainly not with any other long-term goal than to keep on having sex with her - to stay in the sort of relationship with her that he sensed she would allow, because he loved her in his 'sick, soulless way' and didn't want to let her go) but she knew perfectly well what he was doing and most importantly, she allowed it. She let him.
The reasons for this are not pleasant of course. She hated herself and therefore allowed herself to enter into a relationship she herself found degrading, but it was her decision always - just as it was hers to end it. If Spike had been this master manipulator of the poor little helpless woman (God, the very idea is so bloody sexist!) then the AR would never have happened.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-29 10:31 am (UTC)Ok, I was coming over to see something remotely intelligent but you've done it for it and done a better job as well.
The only person in the driver's seat in that relationship was Buffy, Spike may have been a good minion manipulator (see Season Two)but trying it out on Buffy would never/could never have worked.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 08:15 pm (UTC)My main arguments against this line of thinking would pretty much turn Buffy into the dumb bubble headed blond she wasn't supposed to be.
My next thought is if Spike was such a world class manipulator he would have been at The Magic Shop in Entropy for a love spell instead of a forget spell for himself.
I think Buffy was more of a manipulator than he was using his love for her to get everything from a babysitter to a sex toy...as long as it was convient for her.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 03:46 am (UTC)I think that what most disturbed me about the TWOP post was that I actually agree with the poster inasmuch as the character we were discussing on that particular show's thread. That character does get off on manipulation. He did come to town seeming like a nice guy, meanwhile he's been turned pretty much into a cartoon villain since then. He does have half the town dancing to his tune (in somewhat ridiculous plots) such that he's brainwashed one guy, shot another and got away with it, probably killed two other characters, and raped a female character (there is some debate on that shows thread over whether or not it was raped because it was couched such that the female character consented... however, she basically consented under duress, meaning that the bad guy in question just shot her stepfather and left him for dead, her fiance was unconscious and trapped in the snow and she was unable to save him, and the bad guy had a gun, telling her that her fiance would die if she didn't have sex with him. And did I mention, that he had a gun and had just shot her stepfather?!) Basically there's no ambiguity with the character in question on the show. He does stalk this girl. There was a rape (not attempted, complete) and he IS controlling many characters on the canvas. And, this character clearly gets off on having this kind of "control". Getting into this convo with this SMG fan (and her screen name proclaimed her as a SMG fan) was upsetting to me because the character we were discussing pretty much is the character that Spike-haters accuse Spike of being. The thing is, while I can accept accusations of Spike being obsessive, I really have a hard time of seeing Spike as a Svengali figure. Spike didn't have the kind of power base that this character has. Spike also didn't seem to derive pleasure from controlling others. In fact, Spike was very, very rarely in a position to control others. Spike has a ton of flaws, any of which can make him a villain. But I just cannot wrap myh head around Spike Svengalli. Out of all his flaws (and there are many) being labelled "manipulative" just isn't high among his character traits. And, like I posted, goodness knows I can lob all sorts of insults at Buffy. I don't however consider her as being "manipulative." It's like this person is choosing a specific vice to blame Spike with (and which fits perfectly with poor victimized Buffy mindset) that doesn't actually fit Spike all that well. If someone has to villainize him, I kind of wish they'd do so with traits he actually did possess in great quantatities. As far as being "manipulative" as a specific trait, Spike didn't seem more manipulative than most people. Everyone wants what they want and tries to work things out to turn out that way. I just don't see where Spike's was much more egregious than anyone else in that regard. Frankly, I think I could take the accusation of "unrepentant killer" in greater stride than "Spike was a master manipulator" because, for the life of me, I just can't see it.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 03:46 am (UTC)And plot bunnies are hell. Yours sounds cool (though the fic would make me cry). I had a plot bunny attack the other day (and I'll never have time to write it) of a a Buffy story set 20 years after Chosen, where Buffy, fresh from a divorce from 'nomal guy' finds she misses being a 'superhero' and seeks out Giles and New Watcher Central again after having spent a decade or more being the "retired" Slayer (since there are plenty of Slayers to go around. She wasn't needed and could have the 'normal' life she always wanted. Anyway, once back in the Slayer fold she discovers the secret that Giles has been hiding from her. Namely, the fact that since Chosen there have been no new Slayers. The youngest of the Slayers is now in her 30s. And the question arises as to whether there was a natural limit to Slayers, and that by activating so many at once, whether she had played out the "Slayer line." And this would harken back to the old Eye of Botox thing of a "weakness in the Slayer line" (That was never explained.) After all, The First couldn't exactly be vanquished. Not forever. Only temporarily. What if... The First actually won in Chosen and they were only just figuring that out (20 years in the future). All The First has to do is wait for the Slayer line to die out. Buffy's 'brilliant victory' wasn't so 'brilliant' after all.
Of course there would have to be a way to rectify it because I'm not into dark endings. I always have to have some hope. But, then, I'll almost certainly never have time to write this anyway.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-10 08:19 pm (UTC)What if... The First actually won in Chosen. [...] Buffy's 'brilliant victory' wasn't so 'brilliant' after all.
I've actually read a story like this. Buffy dies and the First takes over her body. The whole point was for the First to become corporeal, because it could not alter and affect events as well without a body. The story ended up being a crossover with Stargate, but it was an excellent read. There is a sequel in the works, and the tale is unfinished at this point. If you're interested, I can track down a link.