Is it okay to mistreat a metaphor? A Jossverse poll.

[shapinglight]

Okay, so we all know (I think) that BtVS is not a show about vampires and that if Joss Whedon had been left to follow his own instincts there might well have been no vampire characters in the show, beyond disposable villain of the week/season. Vampires were there to be staked by Buffy as comic relief or as metaphors for parts of her growing up process.

We weren't supposed to care about them, and to make sure we didn't fall into that trap, Joss introduced the vampires-are-soulless-and-therefore-can-never-be-anything-but-evil idea to differentiate between the characters we were supposed to care about and those we weren't.

More behind cut, with a poll.



Of course, with the introduction of Spike and Dru, things began to get messy, and they only got messier when Spike became a show regular and poor, hopeless Harmony got vamped. They got messier still when Angel had his fling with Darla in AtS season 2, Spike and Buffy had their affair in BtVS season 6, and when Harmony became a regular in AtS season 5, and so on and so on. In other words, the vampire characters grew personalities, let us into their lives and made us care about them, or at least be intrigued by them. They became people, not things, or some of them did.

That being the case, I'd be interested to know whether people think there's some measure of degree in the way the good guys can treat vampires as opposed to the way they treat other humans. Please note, I'm not saying they shouldn't kill them. It pretty much goes without saying that they have to. But if they treat them badly otherwise - for instance, the way Spike treats Harmony, and the way Angel treats Darla in Epiphany - does it matter the same, or less?

[Poll #1575802]

Also, I might as well fess up and admit this poll is the result of an ongoing dispute on a comics fanboard about Spike's treatment of a female vampire character (not Harmony) in a recent issue of the Angel comic, but I have had qualms about the subject for a long time. No, I don't think Joss meant us to approve of Spike's treatment of Harmony in AtS season 5, but I suspect we were meant to disapprove less because she was a vampire, and I really don't know what the AtS writers thought they were saying in the scene in Epiphany where Lorne and Angel are discussing his Despair Sex with Darla, but the RL connotations are very unpleasant. See here for the text of that exchange.

ETA: As usual, I seem to have framed my poll questions badly. If you vote 'yes' in the poll, it doesn't follow that you think vampires are fluffy kittens and should be treated as such, just that you don't think that just because they're vampires anything goes.

Comments

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

For me It's always been about the point is that the 'good guys' shouldn't be seen as stooping to the 'bad guys' level.

Also how Whedon defined what Vampires as a whole were capable of is such a huge grey area.

[shapinglight]

For me It's always been about the point is that the 'good guys' shouldn't be seen as stooping to the 'bad guys' level.

Yes, that's a big part of it for me too. The good guys should know better, and of course there are plenty of times when they do, such as when Buffy tells Faith to stop pummelling the vampire in Faith, Hope and Trick and just slay him already.

However, there are plenty of times when they don't know better and I often feel the no soul thing is used as a kind of get out clause, no matter the circumstances.

[empty-mirrors.livejournal.com]

The way you treat someone reflects on you as a person not on them. Thus, if you treat even a souless vamp badly, IMO you lessen yourself as a 'good guy'. Everyone/everything should be respected - within the realms of possibility, of course. This is why, for me, The Initiative could never be 'good guys', even without the Adam fiasco. You don't torture a dangerous animal/vampire/demon, you put it down quickly and humanely.

During the series, all the 'good guys' walked the line on this one. And IMO most of them failed the test.

[shapinglight]

Very well put.

:applauds:

[elisi]

You know, it's not so much about the vampires, as about the people - if they mistreat someone, that says more about *them*, as people, than about what they're mistreating. Like how we treat pets.

(I hope that makes sense.)

ETA: empty_mirrors said it much better. I agree with her.

[shapinglight]

It makes perfect sense, don't worry.

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[coalitiongirl.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly. It's not about them, it's about you.

[quinara]

*super nods*

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

Yes, this! :)

[rahirah]

I wouldn't necessarily say it's wrong to treat vampires badly because it hurts their feelings, but I think that treating one's enemies inhumanely makes one no better than the 'inhuman' enemies you're fighting.

[mrs-underhill.livejournal.com]

My answer would be more like "Heroes shouldn't treat vampires badly because it'll morally corrupt the heroes". And why? Because vampires can suffer and feel, yes, and so option 1 suits me best.

As for vampires serving as metaphores of everyday evil which can assault us and of which Christians pray to deliver them - I'm totally on-board with this, just like with Tolkien's Orcs.
A vampire attacking someone in the dark alley is the embodiment of evil and horror of someone actually attacking you in the dark alley. It's real evil, it's out there, it exists in the world, and Buffy fighting it is the metaphore of someone coming to help and stop the attack.
When Buffy kills a vamp it symbolized exactly that - stopping that evil - not necessarily killing the person who does it. Evil is inside us, and some people let it control them. Buffy could be a metaphore for someone scaring off the attacker, the policeman showing up on time and arresting him, or someone bringing the attacker back to reason even, and making him repent. I.e. an intervention of Good vs. Evil which stops the Evil in whatever way.

So I'm fine with using vampires as embodiments of this kind of evil, the evil which should be destroyed. But in Jossverse vampires came to symbolize more than that - they also started to represent real people with failed moral compass, and painfull process of getting the soul back is the metaphore for repenting. Actually almost all the vampires we came to care about went through some kind of redemption process - even Harmony.
Warren is for all purposes a vampire in this context - as he forfeited the use of his soul and went on the evil way.

But in both contexts, with vampires symbolizing fallen people and embodiments of evil, it's important for heroes not to cross the line themselves. Fire, stake, sunlight, decapitation destroy vamps, so quick kill along those lines is a metaphore for destroying evil. But torturing vamps shows heroes falling into moral trap. Not sure Joss always made a good job of making it clear, but he tried at least.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Ok, Not that easy a question to answer. To me (and I know that's only partly in accrdance with the Jossverse) the fight between humans and vampires is a kind of natural war. One side kills the other, it's written into both their natures to survive. It's also written into vampire's natures to torture their victims. Pretty much like a cat toys with a mouse it's killing.

That in my mind does not make it ok for a being that claims to have morals to torture cats...or vampires. If you claim moral superiority, if you claim to be on the good side, this ha to extend to ethic treatment of the enemy.
In my mind also to some kind of warriors honor (which is the reason why I'm very ok with Buffy not staking Spike in S4, because it would have been like shooting a tiger in a cage).

So no, you can't do everything you want to vampires without becoming evil yourself. They warrant a high level of paranoia. They warrant killing on sight if they pose a danger, but you can't torture them and get to feel good afterwards.

Of course it happens, it's a war, but it should never be a moment a hero just slides over. Torture is to leave a mark on the torturer as well, and it does.

[hello-spikey.livejournal.com]

*cough* hero privilege.

If the behavior would not be good coming from a bad guy, it's not good coming from a good guy.

I hate the implication, the implicit deceit in so much of our fiction, that acceptable behavior changes according to this invisible 'protagonist' sign. Buffyverse is pretty bad at this. It's a selfish morality that translates to the way people in reality choose people to be courteous to and people who 'aren't worth it'.

[ex_peasant441]

You destroy a dangerous dog, but you do it the quickest, kindest way possible. Anything less adds to the sum of cruelty in the world and leads to an escalation of cruel behaviour which results in everyone suffering more.

I don't think Buffy understood this fully. For her it seemed to be far more about responding to 'goodness' with goodness and 'evil' with evil.

I also don't think Angel understood it. He seemed to believe it was more important to show compassion to everything because he thought none of us have the right to make a judgement about when, as it were, a dog was so dangerous it had to be put down. He did of course kill things all the time, but I suspect that in every case he saw it as a bad thing he had done - giving in to his dark side - and he could only get through it by focussing on the victims he had saved as notches on his bed post towards redemption.

Giles understood. Also probably Wes, Cordelia and possibly Spike by the end.

[calturner.livejournal.com]

This exactly.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It matters in some sense. I have no problem with the whole Slayer mission statement. But there is a point where one needs to be aware of the hero's need to be...well... heroic and it not become "Jack Bauer is right even when he's on a torture-spree!" There is a point where the hero's actions reflect who the hero is, so there are lines that can be crossed where the hero goes from a force of good to sadist (I'm not saying that the characters went there, but that this boundary is there).

It's kind of (though not exactly like) the True Blood plot where the humans kept the vampire locked in the basement to use his blood as a drug. Even if the that vampire had been evil (and we had no indication that he was, but even if he had been) the thing was that at that point the humans had become vampires themselves.
The 'good guys' actions matter inasmuch as it is actions that define them as 'good guys' it's not an unchanging birthright.

And if Joss thought that the vampires wouldn't take over, then he was terribly, terribly naive. Vampires always take over. There's a reason why they keep popping up again and again and again in fiction -- they fascinate people!

[next_to_normal]

What everybody else said, pretty much. It's not about whether vampires have feelings, or if they're evil or not. It's about, "You're the good guys. You should act like it."

[ubi4soft.livejournal.com]

This is the fourth time when I try to leave a coherent comment.

The post and people whom are OK with Spike's treatment of Felicia Valentine I suppose they are OK with fucking a sheep, milking and then cooking it. I have no idea but maybe cannibals were doing it this way. I thought we're supposed to be more civilized than cannibals.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I very much agree with the argument about what it does to the people who do the torturing, etc.

I'd add that it's even more complicated in the 'verse, because while vampires are sometimes just personifications of evil; they are sometimes real persons. Contrary to what Daniel said at IDW, they are not programmed to *just* be evil. Spike's willingness to halt a killing spree to save Drusilla in Lie to Me is a *choice*. A shark presumably couldn't make a choice like that, couldn't care about anything more than being a predator. The very first vamps we saw on the show were quite capable of giving up their own lives out of loyalty to the Master. Again, that's a sign of something other than an animal-like predatory nature. And those two examples come from early on when it's NOT as complicated as it gets when we find out that vampires are capable of being complex, engaging characters.

I'm not one who believes that Joss never meant the show to go in the direction of really muddying the waters on the question -- or that the role of the vampires was something forced on him. According to at least one interview, the whole point of introducing Spike was exactly to muddy the waters on the question of what 'evil' is in the verse. A vampire who can love tenderly isn't just a stakeable metaphor. It introduces a huge tension into the text, and I think that's deliberate.

ETA: Also, having Buffy torture a vampire in an episode called When She Was Bad pretty much is all you need to know about whether it's "OK" to torture vampires. It was clearly dark for Buffy to torture a vampire who pretty much just was a personification of evil. It'd be that much worse to do it to a vampire who was also shown in a quasi-human light (i.e. as an actual character rather than disposable villain).

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that you lose the moral high ground when you behave badly. If you are the supposed "good guy" then you should act like it even to those you deem "bad guys". This goes in RL as well as fiction. For example, "good guys" don't torture. "Good guys" don't bully (and when they do they cease to be the "good guys").

Kathleen

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I think that the metaphor was effective AND that it changed as the show went on. As the (human) characters became more aware of the shades of grey in the world, even the "extra" vampires became more individualized. The "Shemp" from Bargaining and Holden Webster are examples of this. The metaphor of evil (vampires) became deeper and richer as the show did. (Okay, maybe the Shemp wasn't all that deep.)

I find it hard to believe that we are expected to see them as feeling nothing and deserving of anything humans can think to throw at them. The Initiative (and the Nazis, before them) were shown to be capable of the kind of rational, banal human evil that we all know is no metaphor.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

You've got my vote! I, too, think the change was intentional. It made everything much more interesting.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I think it's wrong to mistreat any being. So what Angel did to Darla? Wrong. What Buffy did to Spike in Season 6, both using him and beating him in the alley? Wrong.

But I don't have a problem with Buffy busting into Spike's crypt and popping him in the nose. People constantly see this as abuse on her part, but I don't. It's a reminder to Spike that she's the Slayer and she'll slay him if he does something evil. It's the dominance language they speak. And right around then Spike was plotting against her so it was important. If she'd not punched him, he'd have thought she was going soft (just like how he said "ow, wait not ow. You feeling all right? This stuff usually hurts."). He sees her not hurting him as weak. He's a vampire. She's the Slayer. And just because he can't hit doesn't mean he can't rustle up a demon army like Dru and Darla did in AtS. So Buffy has to maintain a position of dominance with him, even though she refuses to kill him when he has a chip.

Now, as for Angel with Harmony in Season 5, I think Harmony would've stayed loyal to Angel if she'd felt a connection with him. Vampires lacking a moral compass need emotion and loyalty to inspire them to change. Harmony is like Vampire Lite--she's prime for redemption. And in fact she's always seemed more redeemable in her vampire years than her human ones--which to me spells growth. She is capable of change. So in this respect, Angel failed her. He's soulblind to her ability to change just as he's soulblind to the fact that Spike had already changed before he'd gotten the soul. This is why I think Angel doesn't understand redemption as much as Spike--he doesn't believe in redemption in the far reaches, where as Spike's lived it.

[fangfaceandrea.livejournal.com]

yes to this. Kill them yes, but treating people badly makes you an ass.