What the hell is 'redemption' anyway?
Jul. 1st, 2004 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxI'll get to what inspired this meandering musing/rant a bit further down. This isn't organized or purposeful. It's just random bitching and confusion (in other words. . . it's not anything particularly new.)
So anyway, I think that 'redemption' has become a something of an empty catch phrase. On board after board in various and sundry fandoms you can find arguments centering on "can character X,Y, or Z be redeemed?" It's usually accompanied by someone on a soap box proclaiming that character X can never be redeemed! Or someone pointing out that character Y is being set up for redemption. The thing is, I'm starting to wonder what is 'redeeming' a character anyway?
Okay, having been a very vocal Spike redemptionist perhaps I'm a bit burned out on the subject. Or (and this is perhaps the more likely reason) perhaps having seen too much of Joss Whedon's work, I've started to believe that 'redemption' is more or less meaningless as far as most stories go.
I mean, what was redemption in the Whedonverse? I don't think it was anything particularly meaningful. Oh, don't mistake me. "Redemption" (capital 'R') was given great moments of pyrotechnics and drama. But when the Whedonverse was all said and done, I have a sneaking suspicion that Joss doesn't believe in redemption.
I remember grinding my teeth at the beginning of Season 7 at Giles saying "You're still the same no matter how you may have appeared to change." Now, there are lots of ways of interpreting that. Way back in 1990 I wasn't offended when on Days' Jack Deveraux said impassionately, "Of course I'm the same man. Sure there have been some cosmetic changes on top, but I'm the same person I've always been. I know that. I've always known that." There was/is some truth to that. So why was I so much more offended by Giles's statement?
I think it's because I tend to believe Joss Whedon really thinks that way. It's difficult to ignore the fact that there was a caste system within the Buffyverse. Willow goes homocidal and she's given a summer vacation in Europe and instant redemption the day she arrives home. What the hell was that? And let's not even get into the fact that neither Buffy nor Xander were ever called on their transgressions at all. Only a few select characters were ever required to seek "Redemption" (capital 'R') . . .and it seemed that to be credited with any degree of redemption a character had to show a degree of selflessness that was almost saintly! And even then, what did it mean?
Spike died for the people who continued to treat him like shit and who didn't even spend a moment to mourne his death. It was an utterly selfless act. . .for which he was damned to hell. I know there were several arguments that just because Angel felt they were damned to hell didn't mean they were really damned to hell. . .except never once were we given any reason on screen to even doubt that this may not be the case. In fact the show repeated the "damned to hell" mantra the whole season and in post season interviews. Face it, in the Whedonverse (both on screen and in the writers minds) Spike and Angel were damned to hell no matter what they did. (And if that's the case, one has to assume that Anya ended up there too).
So what is redemption anyway? Yeah, Spike changed but is that redemption? Is going from killer to savior redemption even if it comes without anything resembling absolution? Does absolution have no bearing on redemption? Is redemption changing?
Uh-oh. Because now we just slammed into the wall of soul canon.
An unsouled being can't be moral. To change requires the deus ex machina soul. So if the soul is the change. . .does the person get credit for it? The person didn't change. A new element was brought in that caused the change.
I guess this quandry has to do with Angel. Was ANGEL redeemed? I'm in no way sure that he was. After all, time and again they enforced the Angel/Angelus dichotomy. For Angel to be "good" at all required a soul. What's more that soul was imposed on him by no action of his own. If it is the soul causing the change, is Angel any more "redeemed" from darkness than a room where someone flips a switch, completing a circuit, and turning on a light? And if the soul is change. . .then is changing redemption or just the natural result of having a good soul imposed on the being? (And yeah, I know this is a nutty question. This is only about the questions within the story. In real life this is just plain nonsense)
Anyway, why is this ostensibly innocent soul doomed to hell anyway? I'm really stuck on this hell thing. I don't understand the purpose of it in the Whedonverse. If Joss is an aetheist then he can't believe in hell. So why are Spike, Angel, Anya, etc. doomed to it? It's not because Joss believes that very bad people are doomed to suffer in hell because they were very bad people. The logical extension of atheism is that Spike, Angel, Anya would be no more doomed than anyone else because post death is nothing but oblivion. Redemption in that case would simply be changing within one's lifetime and doing better (which Spike, Angel, and Anya all did do. . .well, except we're back to the soul quandry). But logically they wouldn't go to hell, so Whedon choosing to say they "go to hell no matter what" is. .. what? Saying he doesn't believe in redemption.
On the other had redemption on BtVS/AtS also in no way resembled any Christian concept, because under a more Christian set of rules they wouldn't have been doomed to hell. In Christianity accepting change/salvation would have redeemed them and they wouldn't have been doomed to hell under those circumstances either.
So, there it is and Joss simply CHOSE it. Spike and Angel, despite sacrifice and "fighting the good fight" are in Mutant Enemy's eyes doomed to hell no matter what. . .so did Joss believe in any sort of redemption? No absolution. Still doomed to hell. Change is highly questionable at best. And a caste system is maintained not only versus some characters being good -- no matter what they do -- but with some characters being doomed. . . no matter what they do.
And then there's the question of whether Angel's final battle was even remotely redemptive. I tend to think. . .er. . .no. I've never seen any real reason to think Angel accomplished anything much in his final struggle. Look how easily W&H was replaced last year. Would "taking out the Circle of the Thorn" do all that much? Even in their own words, all he did was give evil a temporary black eye. . .and in the meantime, what did he REALLY do?
The truth of the matter is Angel didn't sign onto W&H to do good. Angel signed onto W&H so that he could have his son resurrected and given a good life. Which, hey, if it was just Angel, maybe that could be twisted to a selfless act. But. . .really. . . he also brought along his friends. Would Lorne, Wesley, Gunn, Fred have been put on their moral slippery slopes if Angel hadn't been involved? W&H wouldn't have approached them. Would Lorne have ended up a broken man? Would Wesley and Fred have ended up dead? Would Gunn have been complicit in killing them? I'm not saying that the others aren't responsible for their own actions/choices. . . but Angel's decisions weren't selfless and given the catastrophes that followed, I can't say they were for the greater good. And then there's the evil for which Angel is complicit by the end. Angel flat out murdered Drogyn with the idea that it was for "the greater good" except that I'm far from the least bit certain that it was the greater good.
Did Angel completely fail at redemption? He didn't accomplish much for the greater good, he tainted his own mission via murder, he brought friends into a situation that got them killed, he only changed because he pissed gypsies off. One could make a better argument that Spike had changed (and thus been redeemed) because he had SOUGHT his own soul (even if Fury didn't make it look that way). . . except this was never given any weight or explanation within the story either. We may say that Spike's seeking his own soul (and thus change) was his redemption, but I see no reason to think that ME viewed it that way since they steadfastly wanted to ignore the implications of Spike having sought his own soul. Clearly that was something that caused them all sorts of jittery problems. And if that's the case, then I don't really think they viewed it as essential to his redemption.
Pretty much, I'm saying I don't think Joss believed in redemption at all. I think it was an empty buzzword.
Now, yeah, I think this is all a very harsh way to judge this. I don't judge Angel's choices as black/white. I think he tried to do good and didn't always succeed. . . but I don't think that Joss's world accepted that sort of thing. It's their caste system. Good is good (no matter what they do) and bad is bad no matter what they do. And Spike and Angel are doomed to hell.
It doesn't HAVE to be that way. Trying to think of other redemption stories I thought of Aeryn Sun on Farscape. She was pretty much a Nazi who did horrific things then she changed. Except I'm not at all sure that Farscape viewed redemption the way that Joss did. Would Aeryn have considered herself "redeemed?" I never got the impression that she thought in that context. Aeryn did what she needed to do. She grew and she changed. And she didn't end up the person she started out as. . . but was she redeemed? Would she have considered herself redeemed? Can the past even be redeemed? The only comment I can really think of on the subject was Zaahn's words "Grow through your mistakes and redemption will find you." But I'm not sure what that means. If it means growing up, then year Aeryn did a lot of that.
Okay, I'm confuzzled now. Not sure where I'm going with this just that I don't tend to think most stories that raise the concept of redemption really do so on a deep, meaningful level but more along the line of buzzwords. For Spike "redemption" meant dying in a blaze of light for people who didn't give a shit about him and then being doomed to hell. But is that really redemption? Or just a really unlucky sap?
Oh... as for what inspired this convoluted, pointless musing, it was the article re: J&J's reunion in next week's SOD
Quote:
"One of the brilliant [me: bwhahahahahah! yeah, right] things that Jim [Reilly, head writer/cosnulting producer] has done with the people on the island is, he has set the stage for the characters to be torn apart and for relationships to go in different directions," says Co-Executive Producer Steve Wyman. "In the case of Jack and Jennifer, I don't think there is anybody out there who could possibly be rooting to see Jennifer with anybody else or Jack with anybody else. But Jack is a genuinely flawed character. He's flawed in the sense of priorities. He's constantly professed his love for Jennifer while running after every half-baked scheme in the world. So, the story of Jack and Jennifer is a story of patience and redemption and, in this particular case, this is part of the stage that Jack has to go through in order to be redeemed."
To which my question was-- REDEEMED FROM WHAT?! Being murdered? I mean, yeah, in 1989 Jack needed Redemption (capital 'R'), but since then, not so much. What crime did Jack commit last go round that they think he needed to be redeemed? He was stupid enough to end up in the serial killer plot and thus he was killed? Or was it that, stupid Jack, he actually went to work while living in Salem.? He didn't spend every waking moment obsessing over Jennifer. God knows, only about 2 people in Salem actually had jobs and thus every time Jack would ever be the least interested in work, Jennifer would end up in "my husband ignores me" whining story and then she promptly falls for the newbie con-man deus jour. So Jack needs to be "redeemed" from wrong priorities. . . why doesn't Jennifer need to be redeemed from having unrealistic demands of constant romantic thrills and for a shocking amount of gullibility for con men? 'Cause she's not Jack. She's Jennifer. And Jack is always the redeem-ee and she's always the redeem-er.
Still, I couldn't imagine what Jack needed to be redeemed FROM. And if this is what being "redeemed" has sunk to then it's pretty meaningless. Let's all be redeemed because we go to work and have careers. (Damn, really need to come up with an emoticon for eye-rolling!)
And, for a musical cue on the whole subject of redemption:
"Dare You to Move"
So anyway, I think that 'redemption' has become a something of an empty catch phrase. On board after board in various and sundry fandoms you can find arguments centering on "can character X,Y, or Z be redeemed?" It's usually accompanied by someone on a soap box proclaiming that character X can never be redeemed! Or someone pointing out that character Y is being set up for redemption. The thing is, I'm starting to wonder what is 'redeeming' a character anyway?
Okay, having been a very vocal Spike redemptionist perhaps I'm a bit burned out on the subject. Or (and this is perhaps the more likely reason) perhaps having seen too much of Joss Whedon's work, I've started to believe that 'redemption' is more or less meaningless as far as most stories go.
I mean, what was redemption in the Whedonverse? I don't think it was anything particularly meaningful. Oh, don't mistake me. "Redemption" (capital 'R') was given great moments of pyrotechnics and drama. But when the Whedonverse was all said and done, I have a sneaking suspicion that Joss doesn't believe in redemption.
I remember grinding my teeth at the beginning of Season 7 at Giles saying "You're still the same no matter how you may have appeared to change." Now, there are lots of ways of interpreting that. Way back in 1990 I wasn't offended when on Days' Jack Deveraux said impassionately, "Of course I'm the same man. Sure there have been some cosmetic changes on top, but I'm the same person I've always been. I know that. I've always known that." There was/is some truth to that. So why was I so much more offended by Giles's statement?
I think it's because I tend to believe Joss Whedon really thinks that way. It's difficult to ignore the fact that there was a caste system within the Buffyverse. Willow goes homocidal and she's given a summer vacation in Europe and instant redemption the day she arrives home. What the hell was that? And let's not even get into the fact that neither Buffy nor Xander were ever called on their transgressions at all. Only a few select characters were ever required to seek "Redemption" (capital 'R') . . .and it seemed that to be credited with any degree of redemption a character had to show a degree of selflessness that was almost saintly! And even then, what did it mean?
Spike died for the people who continued to treat him like shit and who didn't even spend a moment to mourne his death. It was an utterly selfless act. . .for which he was damned to hell. I know there were several arguments that just because Angel felt they were damned to hell didn't mean they were really damned to hell. . .except never once were we given any reason on screen to even doubt that this may not be the case. In fact the show repeated the "damned to hell" mantra the whole season and in post season interviews. Face it, in the Whedonverse (both on screen and in the writers minds) Spike and Angel were damned to hell no matter what they did. (And if that's the case, one has to assume that Anya ended up there too).
So what is redemption anyway? Yeah, Spike changed but is that redemption? Is going from killer to savior redemption even if it comes without anything resembling absolution? Does absolution have no bearing on redemption? Is redemption changing?
Uh-oh. Because now we just slammed into the wall of soul canon.
An unsouled being can't be moral. To change requires the deus ex machina soul. So if the soul is the change. . .does the person get credit for it? The person didn't change. A new element was brought in that caused the change.
I guess this quandry has to do with Angel. Was ANGEL redeemed? I'm in no way sure that he was. After all, time and again they enforced the Angel/Angelus dichotomy. For Angel to be "good" at all required a soul. What's more that soul was imposed on him by no action of his own. If it is the soul causing the change, is Angel any more "redeemed" from darkness than a room where someone flips a switch, completing a circuit, and turning on a light? And if the soul is change. . .then is changing redemption or just the natural result of having a good soul imposed on the being? (And yeah, I know this is a nutty question. This is only about the questions within the story. In real life this is just plain nonsense)
Anyway, why is this ostensibly innocent soul doomed to hell anyway? I'm really stuck on this hell thing. I don't understand the purpose of it in the Whedonverse. If Joss is an aetheist then he can't believe in hell. So why are Spike, Angel, Anya, etc. doomed to it? It's not because Joss believes that very bad people are doomed to suffer in hell because they were very bad people. The logical extension of atheism is that Spike, Angel, Anya would be no more doomed than anyone else because post death is nothing but oblivion. Redemption in that case would simply be changing within one's lifetime and doing better (which Spike, Angel, and Anya all did do. . .well, except we're back to the soul quandry). But logically they wouldn't go to hell, so Whedon choosing to say they "go to hell no matter what" is. .. what? Saying he doesn't believe in redemption.
On the other had redemption on BtVS/AtS also in no way resembled any Christian concept, because under a more Christian set of rules they wouldn't have been doomed to hell. In Christianity accepting change/salvation would have redeemed them and they wouldn't have been doomed to hell under those circumstances either.
So, there it is and Joss simply CHOSE it. Spike and Angel, despite sacrifice and "fighting the good fight" are in Mutant Enemy's eyes doomed to hell no matter what. . .so did Joss believe in any sort of redemption? No absolution. Still doomed to hell. Change is highly questionable at best. And a caste system is maintained not only versus some characters being good -- no matter what they do -- but with some characters being doomed. . . no matter what they do.
And then there's the question of whether Angel's final battle was even remotely redemptive. I tend to think. . .er. . .no. I've never seen any real reason to think Angel accomplished anything much in his final struggle. Look how easily W&H was replaced last year. Would "taking out the Circle of the Thorn" do all that much? Even in their own words, all he did was give evil a temporary black eye. . .and in the meantime, what did he REALLY do?
The truth of the matter is Angel didn't sign onto W&H to do good. Angel signed onto W&H so that he could have his son resurrected and given a good life. Which, hey, if it was just Angel, maybe that could be twisted to a selfless act. But. . .really. . . he also brought along his friends. Would Lorne, Wesley, Gunn, Fred have been put on their moral slippery slopes if Angel hadn't been involved? W&H wouldn't have approached them. Would Lorne have ended up a broken man? Would Wesley and Fred have ended up dead? Would Gunn have been complicit in killing them? I'm not saying that the others aren't responsible for their own actions/choices. . . but Angel's decisions weren't selfless and given the catastrophes that followed, I can't say they were for the greater good. And then there's the evil for which Angel is complicit by the end. Angel flat out murdered Drogyn with the idea that it was for "the greater good" except that I'm far from the least bit certain that it was the greater good.
Did Angel completely fail at redemption? He didn't accomplish much for the greater good, he tainted his own mission via murder, he brought friends into a situation that got them killed, he only changed because he pissed gypsies off. One could make a better argument that Spike had changed (and thus been redeemed) because he had SOUGHT his own soul (even if Fury didn't make it look that way). . . except this was never given any weight or explanation within the story either. We may say that Spike's seeking his own soul (and thus change) was his redemption, but I see no reason to think that ME viewed it that way since they steadfastly wanted to ignore the implications of Spike having sought his own soul. Clearly that was something that caused them all sorts of jittery problems. And if that's the case, then I don't really think they viewed it as essential to his redemption.
Pretty much, I'm saying I don't think Joss believed in redemption at all. I think it was an empty buzzword.
Now, yeah, I think this is all a very harsh way to judge this. I don't judge Angel's choices as black/white. I think he tried to do good and didn't always succeed. . . but I don't think that Joss's world accepted that sort of thing. It's their caste system. Good is good (no matter what they do) and bad is bad no matter what they do. And Spike and Angel are doomed to hell.
It doesn't HAVE to be that way. Trying to think of other redemption stories I thought of Aeryn Sun on Farscape. She was pretty much a Nazi who did horrific things then she changed. Except I'm not at all sure that Farscape viewed redemption the way that Joss did. Would Aeryn have considered herself "redeemed?" I never got the impression that she thought in that context. Aeryn did what she needed to do. She grew and she changed. And she didn't end up the person she started out as. . . but was she redeemed? Would she have considered herself redeemed? Can the past even be redeemed? The only comment I can really think of on the subject was Zaahn's words "Grow through your mistakes and redemption will find you." But I'm not sure what that means. If it means growing up, then year Aeryn did a lot of that.
Okay, I'm confuzzled now. Not sure where I'm going with this just that I don't tend to think most stories that raise the concept of redemption really do so on a deep, meaningful level but more along the line of buzzwords. For Spike "redemption" meant dying in a blaze of light for people who didn't give a shit about him and then being doomed to hell. But is that really redemption? Or just a really unlucky sap?
Oh... as for what inspired this convoluted, pointless musing, it was the article re: J&J's reunion in next week's SOD
Quote:
"One of the brilliant [me: bwhahahahahah! yeah, right] things that Jim [Reilly, head writer/cosnulting producer] has done with the people on the island is, he has set the stage for the characters to be torn apart and for relationships to go in different directions," says Co-Executive Producer Steve Wyman. "In the case of Jack and Jennifer, I don't think there is anybody out there who could possibly be rooting to see Jennifer with anybody else or Jack with anybody else. But Jack is a genuinely flawed character. He's flawed in the sense of priorities. He's constantly professed his love for Jennifer while running after every half-baked scheme in the world. So, the story of Jack and Jennifer is a story of patience and redemption and, in this particular case, this is part of the stage that Jack has to go through in order to be redeemed."
To which my question was-- REDEEMED FROM WHAT?! Being murdered? I mean, yeah, in 1989 Jack needed Redemption (capital 'R'), but since then, not so much. What crime did Jack commit last go round that they think he needed to be redeemed? He was stupid enough to end up in the serial killer plot and thus he was killed? Or was it that, stupid Jack, he actually went to work while living in Salem.? He didn't spend every waking moment obsessing over Jennifer. God knows, only about 2 people in Salem actually had jobs and thus every time Jack would ever be the least interested in work, Jennifer would end up in "my husband ignores me" whining story and then she promptly falls for the newbie con-man deus jour. So Jack needs to be "redeemed" from wrong priorities. . . why doesn't Jennifer need to be redeemed from having unrealistic demands of constant romantic thrills and for a shocking amount of gullibility for con men? 'Cause she's not Jack. She's Jennifer. And Jack is always the redeem-ee and she's always the redeem-er.
Still, I couldn't imagine what Jack needed to be redeemed FROM. And if this is what being "redeemed" has sunk to then it's pretty meaningless. Let's all be redeemed because we go to work and have careers. (Damn, really need to come up with an emoticon for eye-rolling!)
And, for a musical cue on the whole subject of redemption:
"Dare You to Move"
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-02 10:58 am (UTC)Re: Redemption
Date: 2004-07-07 07:57 pm (UTC)As for J&J, you have realize that must be viewed through Days' Soap lens which takes into account that by virtue of the show it's on, is mostly campy, usually silly, always outrageous, and bizarrely founded on a downright B/A "duckian" belief in "soulmates for life". . .and I fell in love with the couple 15 years ago when I was but a teen myself (hope that explains my warped affection for it).
Basically, it was the old story of boy [whose biological father abused his sons and molested his daughter and whose adoptive father was a U.S. Senator turned serial killer leaving boy with a fortune and a deep seeded belief that he was born a bad guy due to both nature and nurture] meets girl [virginal, idealistic, ingenue cub reporter]
15 year old clip courtesy of Denialvillle (http://www.denialville.com/video/first.wmv) (Get a load of the computer on his desk. ROFL!)
Girl sees soft, mushy underbelly of rich, bad boy and falls in love. Boy resists mightily because he believes he isn't the kind of man such a pristine girl should fall for (plus, he's her boss).
Another 15 year old clip courtesy of Denialville (http://www.denialville.com/video/perfect.wmv)
Girl desperately tries to convince boy that he can be his own (good) man, free of the destructive influence of his homocidal father.
Yet another 15 year old clip (http://www.denialville.com/video/ibiy_kiss.wmv) And that almost works until...
Boy has to kill adoptive father to prevent father from murdering boy's biological brother.
Boy becomes 100% convinced that he must be evil and pushes girl away.
Girl became angry--very, very angry (long story which involves missing heriesses, angry oil barons, tiaras, ball gowns, and the murder of the boy's brother) until boy (dressed as guard to slip into unnamed foreign embassy where girl is held captive) has emotional epiphany and admits the truth.
Another ancient clip (http://www.denialville.com/video/embassy.wmv) and another (http://www.denialville.com/video/tunnel.wmv)
Boy and girl survive shipwreck, train wreck, earthquake, Eve Donovan, Lawrence Alamain, and other natural disasters before finally walking down the aisle (which in this case happened to have been located in a rodeo arena. Don't ask.). Add in bankruptcy, a cancer scare, the birth of a daughter named Abigail (who had a rare disease that once miraculously cured has never been mentioned again), a divorce, girl marrying someone else (someone Eeeeeeevillll), their re-marriage, yadda, yadda, yadda as 15 years come and go. And boy (er...man) gets "murdered" by serial killer.
Musical Montage Courtesy of Denialville (http://www.sjipendergraft.com/jj/scientist.wmv)
Now, Girl...er...woman is 9 1/2 months pregnant with their second child (yes, you read that right. And it's a supposedly "high risk" pregnancy too. LOL!) and has literally fallen off a cliff and-- whoopsie! Dead hubby isn't dead (he's just been held captive for the last 9 months)! And, dressed like Indiana Jones, he's coming to the rescue.
ROFL! Rememeber I warned that it was all rather outrageously (okay, embarrassingly) silly and outrageous. But the wacky, wacked out, overwrought paring still tugs nostalgically at the heartstrings of my inner teenager who was once upon a time sighed over "twu wuv 4 eva." :)
Girl (is forced to) marries someone else.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-10 04:46 pm (UTC)You've also made me nostalgic for watching soaps, although I haven't done that in years... the whole "ooh, is so and so getting back together" roundabout... (wistful sigh)