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May. 7th, 2009 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightAn interview with Juliet Landau about the upcoming Dru comic here.
At the very end of the interview, in response to a suggestion that 'some people may blame Drusilla for spoiling Buffy and Spike's chances for love', Juliet responds, "If you put things in perspective, Spike and Dru were together for 150 years and he and Buffy were together for a year and a half. How many people can say they've had a love affair for 150 years?"
Thoughts on this, and on Spike/Dru behind cut.
Juliet is of course right. However, I don't know about anyone else, but I've always found Spike and Dru's 150 year love affair rather nebulous. This is because we saw so very little of it in the show, except for how it ended. Yes, a few little blanks are filled in over the years - notably in FFL, LMPTM and Destiny - but really, we know very little about their life together in those 150 years.
We know they appear to have stayed with Angelus and Darla at least some of the time early on, including during the trip to Rome in TGiQ and in Romania in 1898, and Spike and Dru are still with Darla when Angel returns to her in China in 1900. After that, beyond knowing they revisited Rome in the '50s (ciao!) and must at some point have been in Paris, because Dru hated it, and in Vienna because they slaughtered an orphanage there, and in Prague where Dru was hurt by a mob, we know precious little about what they got up to. There's no sign of Dru in 1943 (presumably she had better things to do than attend a free virgin blood party) or in NYC in 1977. This doesn't necessarily mean that she was off doing her own thing but can lead you to assume that the two of them weren't completely inseparable.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we really didn't see much of their 150 year relationship on screen. We have to take its existence largely on trust. That, to me, makes it hard to get invested in it. Buffy and Spike, and for that matter, Angel(us) and Darla, we saw play out on screen in front of us in all their technicolour nuanced glory, and that makes them far more immediate and real.
So basically, Juliet can say whatever she likes, and no doubt the comic she's co-writing will stress how much more important she thinks Dru was to Spike than Buffy ever was. It's natural that she would want to stake a claim for the character, who she clearly loved playing. But really, a comic book is not going to fill in those blanks in the way seeing a relationship play out on screen does, and for that reason alone - though there are plenty of other reasons too - Spike and Buffy will continue, in my eyes, to far outweigh Spike/Dru in importance.
Thoughts? I also have a post brewing about how odd it is that comic book writers/fan boys in general - even those who obviously do love the character a great deal - seem to have an irresitible urge to tear Spike down and make him look like an idiot. That's for another day, though.
Also, for the record, I am looking forward to Juliet's story.
At the very end of the interview, in response to a suggestion that 'some people may blame Drusilla for spoiling Buffy and Spike's chances for love', Juliet responds, "If you put things in perspective, Spike and Dru were together for 150 years and he and Buffy were together for a year and a half. How many people can say they've had a love affair for 150 years?"
Thoughts on this, and on Spike/Dru behind cut.
Juliet is of course right. However, I don't know about anyone else, but I've always found Spike and Dru's 150 year love affair rather nebulous. This is because we saw so very little of it in the show, except for how it ended. Yes, a few little blanks are filled in over the years - notably in FFL, LMPTM and Destiny - but really, we know very little about their life together in those 150 years.
We know they appear to have stayed with Angelus and Darla at least some of the time early on, including during the trip to Rome in TGiQ and in Romania in 1898, and Spike and Dru are still with Darla when Angel returns to her in China in 1900. After that, beyond knowing they revisited Rome in the '50s (ciao!) and must at some point have been in Paris, because Dru hated it, and in Vienna because they slaughtered an orphanage there, and in Prague where Dru was hurt by a mob, we know precious little about what they got up to. There's no sign of Dru in 1943 (presumably she had better things to do than attend a free virgin blood party) or in NYC in 1977. This doesn't necessarily mean that she was off doing her own thing but can lead you to assume that the two of them weren't completely inseparable.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we really didn't see much of their 150 year relationship on screen. We have to take its existence largely on trust. That, to me, makes it hard to get invested in it. Buffy and Spike, and for that matter, Angel(us) and Darla, we saw play out on screen in front of us in all their technicolour nuanced glory, and that makes them far more immediate and real.
So basically, Juliet can say whatever she likes, and no doubt the comic she's co-writing will stress how much more important she thinks Dru was to Spike than Buffy ever was. It's natural that she would want to stake a claim for the character, who she clearly loved playing. But really, a comic book is not going to fill in those blanks in the way seeing a relationship play out on screen does, and for that reason alone - though there are plenty of other reasons too - Spike and Buffy will continue, in my eyes, to far outweigh Spike/Dru in importance.
Thoughts? I also have a post brewing about how odd it is that comic book writers/fan boys in general - even those who obviously do love the character a great deal - seem to have an irresitible urge to tear Spike down and make him look like an idiot. That's for another day, though.
Also, for the record, I am looking forward to Juliet's story.
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Date: 2009-05-08 02:05 pm (UTC)Spike: This is Drusilla, girl! You have the slightest idea what she means to me? It's the face of my salvation! (looks at Dru, smiles slightly) She delivered me from mediocrity. For over a century we ... cut a swath through continents. A hundred years, she never stopped surprising me.
SPIKE: (quietly) Never stopped taking me to new depths. I was a lucky bloke. (Dru smiles) Just to touch such a black beauty.
It's short but very rich as how Spike lived his relationship with Dru: there's some mysticism (face of salvation), gratitude (delivered me from mediocrity), proximity born from crime (WE cut a swath) and history (for over a century), she appears also as a very dynamic and unpredictable character (though we couldn't see it on screen but it's very clear in A hundred years she never stopped surprising me), she's also his guide in the exploration of evil (Never stopped taking me to new depths). I think there's something of a Beatrice to Dante here. There's of course her beauty (and J Landau is really a woman of a rare and particular beauty)which fits with the canons of Romantism. I think everything in Drusilla (her beauty, her story, her madness, her mystery, her unpredactibility and her strength (we only saw her sick for the most part)all appeal to the Romantic poet in Spike. I remember another moment where he spoke about her madness, her seeing bleeding angels in the sky: it was evident it appealed to his poetic side.
I think these little passages are Spike's most beautiful declarations about a woman he has been in love with. This sort of inspiration for the writers seemed to disappear later, alas: by comparison Spike's declaration to Buffy seems rather pedestrian in season 7.
As for saying her relationship with Spike is more important than the one he had with Buffy, obviously no. They are very different in their nature and have opposite effects but each constitutes an equally important part in Spike's life: they can't be separated IMO, without his relationship with Dru, his relationship with Buffy doesn't have the same meaning: the first one is the ground for the second one.
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Date: 2009-05-08 09:07 pm (UTC)This is true, and I understand that Dru was Spike's muse in a way that Buffy wasn't. Buffy was more of a role model. But I suppose that's one reason why I think his relationship with Buffy was more important. It turned him away from childish things, because although Dru may have brought poetry and romance into his life she also made him emotionally static, like all vampires. So yes, she was important but in a negative way, and I can't see that as having the same moral weight, if you like.
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Date: 2009-05-09 01:01 pm (UTC)- from a viewer POV, morally speaking, there's no comparison possible, Buffy/Spike all the way
- from the characters POV,there's no doubt Spike would totally agree with you of course
- from a fictionnal "POV", and how the story is constructed Spike/Dru and Spike/Buffy are symetric stories. The whole concept behind Spike's story could even be schematized as the two branches of a V: a fall and a rise.
As for the childish or teen aspect of Spike's love, I know vampires are metaphors for arrested development but in Spike's case, I tend to think the metaphor is more complex than that; it has been enriched with a litterary substratum. His concept of love reflects the Romantic conceptions of love(and by Romantic I mean the litterary movement)which I would not qualify as childish but as destructive. It's the dark side of love, the one which intertwines with pain and death. IMO, this aspect was equally present in Buffy relationship with Angel: there's this sentence "when you kiss me, I want to die" that has often been interpreted as teenage drama but that I've always read literally. I definitively think there's a moralist in J Whedon.
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Date: 2009-05-09 10:33 pm (UTC)I agree, though I'm not always clear what he's saying, and wonder if he knows himself.
Have to say, having just watched Twilight the movie with my daughter, the "When you kiss me, I want to die," comment sounds to me like it would have fit in to the movie very well indeed.