Secrets and lies
Mar. 26th, 2003 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynGah! Forgot spoilers warning! Ahoy!
Spoilers for Buffy ep Lies My Parents Told Me
It’s impossible not to compare Lies My Parents Told Me to Fool for Love. On the surface, they seem thematically different, although in reality they’re quite a bit the same; structurally they’re extremely similar, but they tweak some of the devices used in FFL to nice effect, especially at the end. And emotionally, they’re nearly identical, in that we come to understand something far deeper about Spike, about Buffy, and about the relationships of others to their pasts and to Buffy in greater depth. And of course there’s William (and Drusilla) at the core of the story, showing us just who Spike really is and what made him that way.
I have so much to say about this episode that I don’t even know if I can put it all in one entry. Thoughts, questions, points of confusion, you name it. I guess I’ll start with the scriptwriters. I was thrilled to see Drew Goddard’s name on the credits (and I’m stating here again, I staked a claim to him first, he’s mine, mine, mine!), especially because I thought it would balance out the worst of David “Rape is funny!” Fury. And it did. In his two and a half scripts this year for Buffy, he’s shown an affinity for the characters and an understanding of them that many of the long-tenured writers don’t have. He’s also got something besides just a great funny bone — he brings a humanity to the characters that Fury has always sorely lacked, and a tenderness as well for their foibles and their faults. He reminds me more of Joss than anyone else. This script really benefited from that, I think, because it was important to show that humanity and that love between the characters so that we could identify with the issues they were facing.
And boy, what issues. Mom issues, abandonment issues, identity issues, parenting issues, and trust issues. Whew! Not to mention a battle for the end of the world, again. They did a deft job of taking a step back from the ongoing storyline to give us a near-standalone ep, while at the same time contributing to the flow of the story, especially regarding how much of a role Spike will play in the end. And it wasn’t just about “oh, how do we get Spike back to his old self” but fortunately about deeper things as well — how easily the First was able to target Spike’s weaknesses, and now we understand why; how difficult it is to relate to others when their picture of us is so different from how we see ourselves; how hard trust is to regain once it’s broken. In a lot of respects, much of what Spike’s suffered through this season hasn’t been just about the soul or the insanity or the First’s brainwashing, but about his desperate need for acceptance and how far that’s pushed him — and pushed others away from him. Seeing how his mother reacted once the demon was inside her gives an even more painful and acute picture of just how badly he wants love and acceptance, even as an unsouled creature.
ME’s been so bad at keeping consistency in their statements about love and souls and what the demon means in terms of the human spirit. On one hand, they’ve said that some traces of the human are there; then they’ve said not. And this ep left me feeling even amore confused — particularly with Spike’s mother. Spike said to Wood that his mother loved him, and the demon he created was not his mother. Yet at the same time, what we saw was her hideous cruelty based on all the things that could easily have existed, that she kept silent about because that’s what women did back then. I wasn’t totally sure I believed Spike — that they were separate creatures, because I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking on his part or not. Regardless, it works for him, and helps him break through the trigger, but at the same time, I’m not certain that his nightmare version of mummie isn’t really a trace of the human inside. Or is ME just trying to point out once again that Spike is utterly, completely unique as a vampire, that he bears more traces of William as human self than other vampires would of their own past selves? Angelus was definitely a manifestation of Liam’s callousness and self-identity issues; Darla and Dru never seemed all that different from their human selves, just eviller; so I’m not totally clear on where William’s mother fits into the continuum, or if Spike is just deluding himself. Maybe it’s both. It’s interesting, nonetheless.
But man, what a mom (I won’t get into the Lestat ripoff here, because, why bother?). A fantastic performance, and James was just incredible in those scenes as well. He looked so radically different from the William of FFL, and in a way, it worked for the character. At home, in his element with his beloved mother, he’s older, stronger, more confident. Still soppy and goofy and sentimental, but in a different way. And he’s so tentative as a newly fledged vampire — there’s a little of that passion in him we see later in FFL, but here he’s got just enough of his old human weaknesses that they create an entirely different character. Not Spike, not William, not even Spilliam, but someone else altogether. I think this is the kind of thing that makes me just drop my jaw in awe of JM — his ability to switch between characters so completely and utterly. This season alone he’s played a dozen different variations on essentially one character, and they’re all unique. It’s just criminal that this guy does not get recognized outside of his fanbase. As he cringed and agonized over her cruel words to him, I just felt so drawn to his pain and his harsh realization that as powerful as he thought he now was, he was still nothing, still unable to elicit even the slightest feeling that he wanted from someone else. (And even though he looked so different, I still thought he was scrummy in every way, from my favorite punk Spike to William to normal-again Spike.)
And Punk!Spike digression: Subway Spike is my favorite Spike. Not because he was a killer, but because that was my time period. I was a punk back at that time, heavily into the music that was coming out of England and NY especially in the mid/late seventies, and the other kids I hung out with all dressed that way and looked like that. They got him so right — the makeup, the jeans ripped just so (and in truth, it was hard work to make your clothes look like you just got them out of the Dumpster, you had to be very precise), the shirt, the boots, the way his jeans were baggy in all the right places (one did not wear tight pants as a ‘70s punk). Subway Spike was my perfect boyfriend look at that time, and so I’ve always loved him. Seeing him punked out again, even if it was in vamp face, which I hate, was a total treat. Wish he still had the motorcycle jacket. /lustful rant.
And then there are the parenting issues between Giles and Buffy. I’d seen, a while ago when some spoilers were coming out (though I didn’t read them, I was reading reactions to them), that people were angry over how Giles reacted to Buffy’s support of Spike. But in truth, while I don’t like it, I can understand it from his point of view. He’s still unable to really see Buffy as an adult — he says her speeches aren’t enough, but he’s neglecting some of the really risky and often harsh decisions she’s had to make recently, I think because he’s blinded by his past role as protector and father figure. And because he can’t see that, he also can’t see that what Buffy feels for Spike is part of a larger world, and that she recognizes the issues. But Giles doesn’t trust Buffy enough now to understand that she is grown up now, and she does see something in Spike he can’t. I’m not sure if Giles can really do this or not, because he has such a bitter history with Spike. I’d always thought of their animosity as more friendly and begrudging, but clearly they’ve taken that down a darker path recently. Giles has now just faced this truly adult Buffy, and I wonder if he’ll be able to see that she clearly does understand what she’s doing, maybe more so than he understands it all, and that she is making better decisions than he is capable of seeing. He sees only the bad aspects of her relationship with Spike, but things have changed so much for them both — and Giles, I think, can’t handle the idea that maybe if they love each other, that’s not so bad, and could be a powerful weapon in the end. I don’t know.
And more curiously, Spike has been manipulated by so many people and entities for so long now, most especially by Buffy, that it’s fascinating to see everyone else except Buffy manipulating him. Giles, Wood, everyone seems fine with the idea of continuing to manipulate him (as if they’re not any worse than the First) and force him to do whatever they demand, and now Buffy’s the only one giving him his free will and supporting him. If that doesn’t say she’s in love with him, I don’t know what does. ;-) She may not understand it, he may not, and the rest of them of course don’t, but she’s clearly more deeply attached to him than anyone’s capable of admitting.
I loved the structural similarities between this and FFL — the crosscutting on the fights to the other settings, the use of dialog from one scene overlapping to the other, the contrasts between dark blue lighting and warm red and orange tones. The fight scene with Wood was excellently staged (though I laughed out loud when he took his shirt off, I expected heraldic music to accompany it or something, yeesh), although I could have done with a little shortening of the graveyard lecture/fight (though Richard was cute). Someday I may write about this thing I’ve had for years, about Buffy’s ability to kill face to face even when she’s having personal conversations with someone, but that’s neither here nor there for now. The ending blew me away — we’ve been seeing over and over how adult and strong Buffy has grown this year, yet Giles hasn’t, others haven’t really, either, and now finally she has made her break with him. As much as it pains me because I love Giles, it was necessary if he’s not going to give her the backup and belief she deserves. She’s made mistakes and done some bad things, but the important thing is that she’s learning.
Spike gets that. He lectured Wood on both Buffy’s character and Nikki’s character, and maybe by being so fixated on killing them, he’s come to understand slayers in the way a family member or a Watcher never could. His insight is crucial here because he may be the only person who will truly back Buffy up with the time comes. He’s not attaching any strings at all to their relationship anymore; he’s letting her go as she needs to, and he gets it totally. And now that he’s got his old self back, now that he’s capable of standing on his feet again and has freed himself (it almost felt like the Wizard of Oz to me — it wasn’t about a device breaking the influence down, but about Spike doing it internally. He’d always had the power, he just didn’t know it, and he clicked his heels together three times and it was all over), he’s probably exactly what Buffy needs as proof that she’s making the right decisions. Wood and Giles won’t see it that way, but as he proves that he’s capable of doing good of his own free will, and that he’s integrated the soul into the vampire he was before and can be trusted, things may change. That Buffy told Wood she would let Spike kill him was a significant step on her part; she’s put her alliances and trust in the one being she never could have imagined trusting before, and she’s strengthened not just herself, but him too.
Anyway. I could just go on and on, and I haven’t even touched on 24 or The Shield, both of which had some cool (and irritating) stuff last night. There was just so much depth to this episode, at least to my eyes, and so much happening that will be crucial to the story, that I could dissect for hours. Maybe I’ll try to order my confusion and questions (and try to get over my snit — I’ve always thought that in FFL, Spike and Dru consummated their relationship after he killed the slayer. I don’t know why, but it always felt to me that they were not lovers at that point — but LMPTM seemed like it was nudging in the direction that they were getting it on earlier than that. Well, phoo) and post some more, although probably I should stop talking about it and just go watch it some more.
Spoilers for Buffy ep Lies My Parents Told Me
It’s impossible not to compare Lies My Parents Told Me to Fool for Love. On the surface, they seem thematically different, although in reality they’re quite a bit the same; structurally they’re extremely similar, but they tweak some of the devices used in FFL to nice effect, especially at the end. And emotionally, they’re nearly identical, in that we come to understand something far deeper about Spike, about Buffy, and about the relationships of others to their pasts and to Buffy in greater depth. And of course there’s William (and Drusilla) at the core of the story, showing us just who Spike really is and what made him that way.
I have so much to say about this episode that I don’t even know if I can put it all in one entry. Thoughts, questions, points of confusion, you name it. I guess I’ll start with the scriptwriters. I was thrilled to see Drew Goddard’s name on the credits (and I’m stating here again, I staked a claim to him first, he’s mine, mine, mine!), especially because I thought it would balance out the worst of David “Rape is funny!” Fury. And it did. In his two and a half scripts this year for Buffy, he’s shown an affinity for the characters and an understanding of them that many of the long-tenured writers don’t have. He’s also got something besides just a great funny bone — he brings a humanity to the characters that Fury has always sorely lacked, and a tenderness as well for their foibles and their faults. He reminds me more of Joss than anyone else. This script really benefited from that, I think, because it was important to show that humanity and that love between the characters so that we could identify with the issues they were facing.
And boy, what issues. Mom issues, abandonment issues, identity issues, parenting issues, and trust issues. Whew! Not to mention a battle for the end of the world, again. They did a deft job of taking a step back from the ongoing storyline to give us a near-standalone ep, while at the same time contributing to the flow of the story, especially regarding how much of a role Spike will play in the end. And it wasn’t just about “oh, how do we get Spike back to his old self” but fortunately about deeper things as well — how easily the First was able to target Spike’s weaknesses, and now we understand why; how difficult it is to relate to others when their picture of us is so different from how we see ourselves; how hard trust is to regain once it’s broken. In a lot of respects, much of what Spike’s suffered through this season hasn’t been just about the soul or the insanity or the First’s brainwashing, but about his desperate need for acceptance and how far that’s pushed him — and pushed others away from him. Seeing how his mother reacted once the demon was inside her gives an even more painful and acute picture of just how badly he wants love and acceptance, even as an unsouled creature.
ME’s been so bad at keeping consistency in their statements about love and souls and what the demon means in terms of the human spirit. On one hand, they’ve said that some traces of the human are there; then they’ve said not. And this ep left me feeling even amore confused — particularly with Spike’s mother. Spike said to Wood that his mother loved him, and the demon he created was not his mother. Yet at the same time, what we saw was her hideous cruelty based on all the things that could easily have existed, that she kept silent about because that’s what women did back then. I wasn’t totally sure I believed Spike — that they were separate creatures, because I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking on his part or not. Regardless, it works for him, and helps him break through the trigger, but at the same time, I’m not certain that his nightmare version of mummie isn’t really a trace of the human inside. Or is ME just trying to point out once again that Spike is utterly, completely unique as a vampire, that he bears more traces of William as human self than other vampires would of their own past selves? Angelus was definitely a manifestation of Liam’s callousness and self-identity issues; Darla and Dru never seemed all that different from their human selves, just eviller; so I’m not totally clear on where William’s mother fits into the continuum, or if Spike is just deluding himself. Maybe it’s both. It’s interesting, nonetheless.
But man, what a mom (I won’t get into the Lestat ripoff here, because, why bother?). A fantastic performance, and James was just incredible in those scenes as well. He looked so radically different from the William of FFL, and in a way, it worked for the character. At home, in his element with his beloved mother, he’s older, stronger, more confident. Still soppy and goofy and sentimental, but in a different way. And he’s so tentative as a newly fledged vampire — there’s a little of that passion in him we see later in FFL, but here he’s got just enough of his old human weaknesses that they create an entirely different character. Not Spike, not William, not even Spilliam, but someone else altogether. I think this is the kind of thing that makes me just drop my jaw in awe of JM — his ability to switch between characters so completely and utterly. This season alone he’s played a dozen different variations on essentially one character, and they’re all unique. It’s just criminal that this guy does not get recognized outside of his fanbase. As he cringed and agonized over her cruel words to him, I just felt so drawn to his pain and his harsh realization that as powerful as he thought he now was, he was still nothing, still unable to elicit even the slightest feeling that he wanted from someone else. (And even though he looked so different, I still thought he was scrummy in every way, from my favorite punk Spike to William to normal-again Spike.)
And Punk!Spike digression: Subway Spike is my favorite Spike. Not because he was a killer, but because that was my time period. I was a punk back at that time, heavily into the music that was coming out of England and NY especially in the mid/late seventies, and the other kids I hung out with all dressed that way and looked like that. They got him so right — the makeup, the jeans ripped just so (and in truth, it was hard work to make your clothes look like you just got them out of the Dumpster, you had to be very precise), the shirt, the boots, the way his jeans were baggy in all the right places (one did not wear tight pants as a ‘70s punk). Subway Spike was my perfect boyfriend look at that time, and so I’ve always loved him. Seeing him punked out again, even if it was in vamp face, which I hate, was a total treat. Wish he still had the motorcycle jacket. /lustful rant.
And then there are the parenting issues between Giles and Buffy. I’d seen, a while ago when some spoilers were coming out (though I didn’t read them, I was reading reactions to them), that people were angry over how Giles reacted to Buffy’s support of Spike. But in truth, while I don’t like it, I can understand it from his point of view. He’s still unable to really see Buffy as an adult — he says her speeches aren’t enough, but he’s neglecting some of the really risky and often harsh decisions she’s had to make recently, I think because he’s blinded by his past role as protector and father figure. And because he can’t see that, he also can’t see that what Buffy feels for Spike is part of a larger world, and that she recognizes the issues. But Giles doesn’t trust Buffy enough now to understand that she is grown up now, and she does see something in Spike he can’t. I’m not sure if Giles can really do this or not, because he has such a bitter history with Spike. I’d always thought of their animosity as more friendly and begrudging, but clearly they’ve taken that down a darker path recently. Giles has now just faced this truly adult Buffy, and I wonder if he’ll be able to see that she clearly does understand what she’s doing, maybe more so than he understands it all, and that she is making better decisions than he is capable of seeing. He sees only the bad aspects of her relationship with Spike, but things have changed so much for them both — and Giles, I think, can’t handle the idea that maybe if they love each other, that’s not so bad, and could be a powerful weapon in the end. I don’t know.
And more curiously, Spike has been manipulated by so many people and entities for so long now, most especially by Buffy, that it’s fascinating to see everyone else except Buffy manipulating him. Giles, Wood, everyone seems fine with the idea of continuing to manipulate him (as if they’re not any worse than the First) and force him to do whatever they demand, and now Buffy’s the only one giving him his free will and supporting him. If that doesn’t say she’s in love with him, I don’t know what does. ;-) She may not understand it, he may not, and the rest of them of course don’t, but she’s clearly more deeply attached to him than anyone’s capable of admitting.
I loved the structural similarities between this and FFL — the crosscutting on the fights to the other settings, the use of dialog from one scene overlapping to the other, the contrasts between dark blue lighting and warm red and orange tones. The fight scene with Wood was excellently staged (though I laughed out loud when he took his shirt off, I expected heraldic music to accompany it or something, yeesh), although I could have done with a little shortening of the graveyard lecture/fight (though Richard was cute). Someday I may write about this thing I’ve had for years, about Buffy’s ability to kill face to face even when she’s having personal conversations with someone, but that’s neither here nor there for now. The ending blew me away — we’ve been seeing over and over how adult and strong Buffy has grown this year, yet Giles hasn’t, others haven’t really, either, and now finally she has made her break with him. As much as it pains me because I love Giles, it was necessary if he’s not going to give her the backup and belief she deserves. She’s made mistakes and done some bad things, but the important thing is that she’s learning.
Spike gets that. He lectured Wood on both Buffy’s character and Nikki’s character, and maybe by being so fixated on killing them, he’s come to understand slayers in the way a family member or a Watcher never could. His insight is crucial here because he may be the only person who will truly back Buffy up with the time comes. He’s not attaching any strings at all to their relationship anymore; he’s letting her go as she needs to, and he gets it totally. And now that he’s got his old self back, now that he’s capable of standing on his feet again and has freed himself (it almost felt like the Wizard of Oz to me — it wasn’t about a device breaking the influence down, but about Spike doing it internally. He’d always had the power, he just didn’t know it, and he clicked his heels together three times and it was all over), he’s probably exactly what Buffy needs as proof that she’s making the right decisions. Wood and Giles won’t see it that way, but as he proves that he’s capable of doing good of his own free will, and that he’s integrated the soul into the vampire he was before and can be trusted, things may change. That Buffy told Wood she would let Spike kill him was a significant step on her part; she’s put her alliances and trust in the one being she never could have imagined trusting before, and she’s strengthened not just herself, but him too.
Anyway. I could just go on and on, and I haven’t even touched on 24 or The Shield, both of which had some cool (and irritating) stuff last night. There was just so much depth to this episode, at least to my eyes, and so much happening that will be crucial to the story, that I could dissect for hours. Maybe I’ll try to order my confusion and questions (and try to get over my snit — I’ve always thought that in FFL, Spike and Dru consummated their relationship after he killed the slayer. I don’t know why, but it always felt to me that they were not lovers at that point — but LMPTM seemed like it was nudging in the direction that they were getting it on earlier than that. Well, phoo) and post some more, although probably I should stop talking about it and just go watch it some more.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-03-26 02:00 pm (UTC)one did not wear tight pants as a ‘70s punk
. . . and say, yes, unless you were the Ramones. Who wore their jeans skin-tight.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-26 02:12 pm (UTC)But boy, the rest of everyone would be caught dead in tight -- that was for disco kids! And we all know how disco trash should be treated. ;-)
I miss the Ramones...
no subject
Date: 2003-05-10 09:16 am (UTC)I read in our daily newspaper the Daily Telegraph today a crit of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" by Brian Singer (who directed "The Usual Suspects" and The "X-Men among others)and at the end he says:
"The choice of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw to play the three central characters in Jaws was masterful casting. It's a lesson in how very fine actors can commit to some potentially goofy scenarios. If you have a serious drama about somebody dying of cancer, or something set during a war, that kind of honesty in performance is a lot easier. When you have three guys versus a killer shark, they really have to commit to those characters. And they do it hilariously at times. There is humour everywhere in that movie, in every scene. If you can make an audience laugh, you keep them off-balance. A good horror film will charm you - and then scare the shit out of you."
I thought you could probably say the same about BtVS