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FFL
I'm not really here... but I just checked out the FFL thread again a little while ago, and noticed that One Bit Shy had finally turned up and joined in! One Bit Shy is a fandom gem - he (I think it's a he) thinks about the show to a degree most other posters there don't seem to, and generally impresses the hell out of me. (Most people in that thread started arguing over Dru being Spike's sire etc. Oh and some of them didn't actually understand Spike's speech to Buffy - I didn't know that was possible.) I'd force OBS to get an LJ this very minute, except he hasn't actually seen AtS yet - he's now watching along with AOQ.
Aaaanyway, there was (of course) also a discussion going about vampires and empathy. One Bit Shy joined in and this is what he said. (Beginning with the comment he replied to)
Unless there is the ulterior motivation, I can't accept the closing
display of empathy for a human being as at all being in character with
Buffy-verse vampires, even a chipped one. He's still an evil evil thing
in my view. It's a sweet nice "There, there" scene, but it just doesn't
compute under analysis, IMO, without a creepiness quotient.
KenM47
Sorry for the length of this, but I think the empathy question matters, and
it prompted some thoughts.
I like to describe chipped Spike as a controlled experiment to determine the
boundaries of the soul. Strip away his ability to express his core vampire
essence - no more killing humans and drinking their blood. Alienate him
from other demons. They're not exactly fond of him hunting their kind. But
more importantly, by preying on them instead of his natural human enemy, he
is subconsciously turning on his vampire self, psychologically rejecting
that part of him. (A slow process, mind you. This scene is easily the most
overt expression of that rejection to date. Past incidents have been
smaller and more easily rationalized by circumstance. It's not something
Spike has understood about himself. What he learns from this, we'll have to
see.)
And then force Spike to live among humans, even rely on them for more than
their blood. Make Spike interact with them on human terms, not his own. In
other words, make him adapt as much as possible to their ways and observe
the limits of his abilities. In time you should be able to get a sense of
what the soul does by seeing what Spike can't do.
(Now actually, it's not all that controlled. Spike probably isn't a typical
vampire. You don't have the comparison of what a souled Spike would be
like. And the demon part, however much suppressed it is, is still there and
still influencing. But he and Angel are pretty much the only ones around to
study. And Spike's the only lab rat. So you take what you can get.)
The point being that Spike is being primed to act as human as a vampire can
absent a soul. And in this scene we get by far the biggest test of his
progress to date. We are definitely challenged by the result. You are
quite right, I believe, to bring up the question of empathy. Wouldn't
empathic ability by Spike defy what we've already learned from Angel about
what the soul provides that the vampire cannot? When Angelus ensouled is
flooded with the true horror of what he's done, feels what it really meant
to his victims, isn't that the introduction of empathy at work?
Perhaps it's just guilt. But I think that's an insupportably narrow view of
what the soul gives - especially since so many people with souls live
stunningly free of guilt. And guilt alone cannot explain the sharing and
understanding of his victims feelings that Angel experienced. Guilt is a
consequence of that. So, perhaps the soul's influence could be described as
the conscience - which it sometimes is in the series. As a description of
the soul's sum I think it's pretty good. Especially since it implies
something lasting that can define a person's character over time in a way
that a more ephemeral understanding could not. But even so, the conscience
still depends on a kind of empathic ability not exhibited by Angelus or much
of any other vampire we've seen. (Except - maybe - Spike.)
That's not to say, incidentally, that vampires are totally absent empathic
ability. At the least there seems to be a kind of vampire empathy at work
in how his victim's emotional horror resonates within Angelus. I think he
must understand and feel what he does to his victims. But the key
difference is that unsouled, he delights in those emotions. It's a work of
art. Feelings that are every bit as complete and nuanced to him as they are
to the human victims, but inverted so as to elevate his state of mind rather
than beat it down. There are probably other simpler and lower forms of
empathy too. Every vampire surely must get each other's hunger to feed.
Indeed, at a base level of understanding, there may be considerable overlap
with human empathy.
But to truly feel it as a human feels it, with all the resulting compassion
and guilt... that kind of understanding and sharing of feelings seems
absent.
So how do you reconcile that with what Spike does in this scene?
Spike has always challenged simplistic notions of vampire behavior. His
devotion to Dru reminds us more of human love than anything we've seen in
the vampire world. Certainly more so than the religious fervor of fealty to
the Master. Even Angel and Darla's pairing has been depicted more as a
partnership in horror where they inspire each other to ever greater evil -
not true love. Spike and Dru also inspire each other that way, but add to
it a personal intimate devotion that exists outside the bounds of good and
evil - especially from Spike. And then you've got Spike's seeming uncanny
ability to see and understand the emotional nuances of humans.
Well, I think it probably starts with simply recognizing that Spike's not
Angelus. That perhaps vampires can be as wildly varying in nature as humans
are. And that Angel might not be as good a template for understanding the
workings of the soul and the demon as we might have thought. (From what I
can gather thus far in the developing AtS story, we can see a similar idea
building with Darla, who would not seem to match the Angel template either,
even though Angel may imagine her to.) There may be more room to maneuver
than we thought.
But even within the constraints of similarity, much can be explained. I
don't think Spike's perceptiveness is really all that different from
Angel's. They just respond to it differently. Angelus exploits the
understanding. Angel is reserved and internalizes it. Spike just blurts it
out like Cordelia. Besides, there's nothing about being vampire that
requires Spike to be stupid or forget what he learned as a human. He's
quite capable of observing and putting two and two together without special
empathic abilities. Likewise, he's quite capable of using his brains and
acquired knowledge to construct a humane looking artifice. If A happens,
good humans are supposed to do B. He already knows much of that, and can
observe more. So he's able to pretend. Maybe even try to fool himself.
But, again, not requiring true empathy. I believe you've promoted something
akin to this - as you have the idea of a kind of twisted vampire love (and
other twisted versions of vampire human-looking emotions) that could go a
long way towards explaining Spike's devotion to Dru. They may follow the
forms of human love, but a close looks also sees them dancing around a flame
of pain and suffering that's human like only in its sickness.
I think Spike does indeed build such an artifice at times. But I don't
think that can explain this scene, where he comes to kill Buffy, certainly
not to deceive her, and clearly responds to her emotional state so
thoroughly as to completely transform his own. That's not faked.
Well, lets go back and look at Spike's memories again. For he would not
just remember what things happened and how things worked. He would also
remember how things felt and why. We've just seen that in spades as he
recalls his bad poet youth and then gets flung into the same emotional state
by Buffy's put down. Indeed, that's why he's here with a gun in this scene.
Since such memories have a way of welling up unbidden from the simplest of
prompts, and flooding you with their emotions, they by themselves could
create the appearance of empathy. In sense they really are, for when you
see someone in a state that reminds you of your own similar experience,
isn't that a form of empathy? (Some might argue that empathy is simply
memory and logic paired. I don't care to go further with that. But it's a
notion.)
I think that can go a long way towards explaining understanding, and
demonstrate Spike's ability to have feelings. Angel's the vampire with a
soul, while Spike is the vampire with feelings. Spike's wide range of
feelings goes back to S2, though it's probably been expanded since the chip.
I think that introduced a dose of self pitying. Now we see more how his
human life informs those feelings.
But there are still serious limits to that. It really only describes a self
centered view. He's still a demon. He still doesn't have a soul and its
elements of conscience. Why does he care about Buffy's feelings? Why
doesn't he exult in her pain the way Angel did? If you go back to In The
Harsh Light Of Day early in S4 - before the chip - he seemed to exult in
Buffy's pain then. Even accepting that Spike's obsession with Buffy and his
sexual attraction makes him less inclined to really want her dead, it still
doesn't explain why he cares so much how she feels now.
Where I end up is questioning the very premise offered. Are you sure that
it's empathy being demonstrated? I'm not. I think it's much more the
somewhat simpler feeling of sympathy. Something that also shares emotions,
but does not require anywhere near the level of understanding that empathy
does - nor its implicit sense of ethics or conscience. Spike knows what it
feels like to cry that way. He was just lying in an alley sobbing himself.
By itself that would likely bring him up short. Even before he begins to
wonder what's bothering Buffy, he's going to be pulled back into his own
sorrow and torn away from the raging fury he approached with. This is
decidedly *not* the climate of final confrontation that he imagined when he
loaded the shotgun.
With his fury stripped away, all the other emotional influences that have
been building up in him can come in play again. The obvious obsession with
Buffy. His sexual desire. How the chip has thrown him back into a human
world, both in the sense of his need to interact with humans today, and in
the sense of how losing his vampire abilities has returned him to the level
of the whimpering bad poet. How he's always felt beneath others and has
latched onto his "betters" aspiring to match them and win their approval.
In his current condition, all of these (and more) point in some fashion to
Buffy - his main contact with the human world, the mountain he cannot climb,
the only human he truly admires.
Though he is only starting to understand this, Buffy has become his role
model, his teacher, and possibly on the way to becoming his hero. She has
repeatedly bested him, and everyday shows Spike how his better acts - in all
ways. Not just in battle. There is much more than sexual desire at work
here - which is why the episode must resolve with something other than sex
or violence. Buffy has become to him what he aspires. He wants her
approval, her companionship - even her friendship. Not her suffering. To
want that is to aspire to lie forever sobbing in the alley. Consoling her
is probably in good part consoling himself. So he puts down the gun and
takes the huge step to forsake his campaign to hurt her, in the process
subconsciously blocking off yet more of his vampire self. He offers himself
as companion. And Buffy accepts.
This is not a bad moment for Spike. When Buffy accepts his company, it's a
sign of approval from her unlike anything he's received before. I imagine
his heart soared. He still sympathizes, still wants her to feel better.
Maybe even more than before Buffy's approval, since that would only feed his
growing sense of devotion. But it's still a great moment for himself.
This is the first time since the chip was implanted that Spike has found
something to live *for* besides ripping the chip out of his head.
As he thinks through it more, he might conclude that it is the first step
upwards from a downward spiral that began with his arrival in Sunnydale back
in S2. Of course that would all be wild hope now. Probably filled with
illusion and further steps back. But still more than he's known in quite
some time.
None of that is terribly empathic. It's actually very self centered. And
requires not a lot more than basic sympathy, which itself serves self
interest, even if not consciously motivated by it. And it's pretty
naturalistic. Spike doesn't have to think through all I wrote. He just
responds to his feelings. One thing nice about evaluating Spike is how
impulsive he is. He tends to react to feelings before thinking them
through. So you can usually see them as they occur.
I wrote all of this because of how important I think your comment on empathy
is. I think there is less empathy here than there might seem at first
glance. (Note that Spike has no clue whatsoever what is wrong with Buffy.
Buffy would not tell him. The only thing he knows is that she's upset.)
But that in itself is one of the clues to Spikes limitations when it comes
to empathy. Watching how empathy does and does not work with Spike - past
and future both - tells a lot about Spike's evolving nature. Shows where
the vampire in him cannot leave. Shows what humanity he is capable of - and
is not.
For purposes of looking ahead, I believe it is specifically Spike's failure
to achieve human empathy where he most fails in his dealings with Buffy.
Even when he most desperately wants and tries to do it the human way, he can
never truly see things through a human's eyes, and cannot stop seeing them
through a vampire's eyes.
OBS
Aaaanyway, there was (of course) also a discussion going about vampires and empathy. One Bit Shy joined in and this is what he said. (Beginning with the comment he replied to)
Unless there is the ulterior motivation, I can't accept the closing
display of empathy for a human being as at all being in character with
Buffy-verse vampires, even a chipped one. He's still an evil evil thing
in my view. It's a sweet nice "There, there" scene, but it just doesn't
compute under analysis, IMO, without a creepiness quotient.
KenM47
Sorry for the length of this, but I think the empathy question matters, and
it prompted some thoughts.
I like to describe chipped Spike as a controlled experiment to determine the
boundaries of the soul. Strip away his ability to express his core vampire
essence - no more killing humans and drinking their blood. Alienate him
from other demons. They're not exactly fond of him hunting their kind. But
more importantly, by preying on them instead of his natural human enemy, he
is subconsciously turning on his vampire self, psychologically rejecting
that part of him. (A slow process, mind you. This scene is easily the most
overt expression of that rejection to date. Past incidents have been
smaller and more easily rationalized by circumstance. It's not something
Spike has understood about himself. What he learns from this, we'll have to
see.)
And then force Spike to live among humans, even rely on them for more than
their blood. Make Spike interact with them on human terms, not his own. In
other words, make him adapt as much as possible to their ways and observe
the limits of his abilities. In time you should be able to get a sense of
what the soul does by seeing what Spike can't do.
(Now actually, it's not all that controlled. Spike probably isn't a typical
vampire. You don't have the comparison of what a souled Spike would be
like. And the demon part, however much suppressed it is, is still there and
still influencing. But he and Angel are pretty much the only ones around to
study. And Spike's the only lab rat. So you take what you can get.)
The point being that Spike is being primed to act as human as a vampire can
absent a soul. And in this scene we get by far the biggest test of his
progress to date. We are definitely challenged by the result. You are
quite right, I believe, to bring up the question of empathy. Wouldn't
empathic ability by Spike defy what we've already learned from Angel about
what the soul provides that the vampire cannot? When Angelus ensouled is
flooded with the true horror of what he's done, feels what it really meant
to his victims, isn't that the introduction of empathy at work?
Perhaps it's just guilt. But I think that's an insupportably narrow view of
what the soul gives - especially since so many people with souls live
stunningly free of guilt. And guilt alone cannot explain the sharing and
understanding of his victims feelings that Angel experienced. Guilt is a
consequence of that. So, perhaps the soul's influence could be described as
the conscience - which it sometimes is in the series. As a description of
the soul's sum I think it's pretty good. Especially since it implies
something lasting that can define a person's character over time in a way
that a more ephemeral understanding could not. But even so, the conscience
still depends on a kind of empathic ability not exhibited by Angelus or much
of any other vampire we've seen. (Except - maybe - Spike.)
That's not to say, incidentally, that vampires are totally absent empathic
ability. At the least there seems to be a kind of vampire empathy at work
in how his victim's emotional horror resonates within Angelus. I think he
must understand and feel what he does to his victims. But the key
difference is that unsouled, he delights in those emotions. It's a work of
art. Feelings that are every bit as complete and nuanced to him as they are
to the human victims, but inverted so as to elevate his state of mind rather
than beat it down. There are probably other simpler and lower forms of
empathy too. Every vampire surely must get each other's hunger to feed.
Indeed, at a base level of understanding, there may be considerable overlap
with human empathy.
But to truly feel it as a human feels it, with all the resulting compassion
and guilt... that kind of understanding and sharing of feelings seems
absent.
So how do you reconcile that with what Spike does in this scene?
Spike has always challenged simplistic notions of vampire behavior. His
devotion to Dru reminds us more of human love than anything we've seen in
the vampire world. Certainly more so than the religious fervor of fealty to
the Master. Even Angel and Darla's pairing has been depicted more as a
partnership in horror where they inspire each other to ever greater evil -
not true love. Spike and Dru also inspire each other that way, but add to
it a personal intimate devotion that exists outside the bounds of good and
evil - especially from Spike. And then you've got Spike's seeming uncanny
ability to see and understand the emotional nuances of humans.
Well, I think it probably starts with simply recognizing that Spike's not
Angelus. That perhaps vampires can be as wildly varying in nature as humans
are. And that Angel might not be as good a template for understanding the
workings of the soul and the demon as we might have thought. (From what I
can gather thus far in the developing AtS story, we can see a similar idea
building with Darla, who would not seem to match the Angel template either,
even though Angel may imagine her to.) There may be more room to maneuver
than we thought.
But even within the constraints of similarity, much can be explained. I
don't think Spike's perceptiveness is really all that different from
Angel's. They just respond to it differently. Angelus exploits the
understanding. Angel is reserved and internalizes it. Spike just blurts it
out like Cordelia. Besides, there's nothing about being vampire that
requires Spike to be stupid or forget what he learned as a human. He's
quite capable of observing and putting two and two together without special
empathic abilities. Likewise, he's quite capable of using his brains and
acquired knowledge to construct a humane looking artifice. If A happens,
good humans are supposed to do B. He already knows much of that, and can
observe more. So he's able to pretend. Maybe even try to fool himself.
But, again, not requiring true empathy. I believe you've promoted something
akin to this - as you have the idea of a kind of twisted vampire love (and
other twisted versions of vampire human-looking emotions) that could go a
long way towards explaining Spike's devotion to Dru. They may follow the
forms of human love, but a close looks also sees them dancing around a flame
of pain and suffering that's human like only in its sickness.
I think Spike does indeed build such an artifice at times. But I don't
think that can explain this scene, where he comes to kill Buffy, certainly
not to deceive her, and clearly responds to her emotional state so
thoroughly as to completely transform his own. That's not faked.
Well, lets go back and look at Spike's memories again. For he would not
just remember what things happened and how things worked. He would also
remember how things felt and why. We've just seen that in spades as he
recalls his bad poet youth and then gets flung into the same emotional state
by Buffy's put down. Indeed, that's why he's here with a gun in this scene.
Since such memories have a way of welling up unbidden from the simplest of
prompts, and flooding you with their emotions, they by themselves could
create the appearance of empathy. In sense they really are, for when you
see someone in a state that reminds you of your own similar experience,
isn't that a form of empathy? (Some might argue that empathy is simply
memory and logic paired. I don't care to go further with that. But it's a
notion.)
I think that can go a long way towards explaining understanding, and
demonstrate Spike's ability to have feelings. Angel's the vampire with a
soul, while Spike is the vampire with feelings. Spike's wide range of
feelings goes back to S2, though it's probably been expanded since the chip.
I think that introduced a dose of self pitying. Now we see more how his
human life informs those feelings.
But there are still serious limits to that. It really only describes a self
centered view. He's still a demon. He still doesn't have a soul and its
elements of conscience. Why does he care about Buffy's feelings? Why
doesn't he exult in her pain the way Angel did? If you go back to In The
Harsh Light Of Day early in S4 - before the chip - he seemed to exult in
Buffy's pain then. Even accepting that Spike's obsession with Buffy and his
sexual attraction makes him less inclined to really want her dead, it still
doesn't explain why he cares so much how she feels now.
Where I end up is questioning the very premise offered. Are you sure that
it's empathy being demonstrated? I'm not. I think it's much more the
somewhat simpler feeling of sympathy. Something that also shares emotions,
but does not require anywhere near the level of understanding that empathy
does - nor its implicit sense of ethics or conscience. Spike knows what it
feels like to cry that way. He was just lying in an alley sobbing himself.
By itself that would likely bring him up short. Even before he begins to
wonder what's bothering Buffy, he's going to be pulled back into his own
sorrow and torn away from the raging fury he approached with. This is
decidedly *not* the climate of final confrontation that he imagined when he
loaded the shotgun.
With his fury stripped away, all the other emotional influences that have
been building up in him can come in play again. The obvious obsession with
Buffy. His sexual desire. How the chip has thrown him back into a human
world, both in the sense of his need to interact with humans today, and in
the sense of how losing his vampire abilities has returned him to the level
of the whimpering bad poet. How he's always felt beneath others and has
latched onto his "betters" aspiring to match them and win their approval.
In his current condition, all of these (and more) point in some fashion to
Buffy - his main contact with the human world, the mountain he cannot climb,
the only human he truly admires.
Though he is only starting to understand this, Buffy has become his role
model, his teacher, and possibly on the way to becoming his hero. She has
repeatedly bested him, and everyday shows Spike how his better acts - in all
ways. Not just in battle. There is much more than sexual desire at work
here - which is why the episode must resolve with something other than sex
or violence. Buffy has become to him what he aspires. He wants her
approval, her companionship - even her friendship. Not her suffering. To
want that is to aspire to lie forever sobbing in the alley. Consoling her
is probably in good part consoling himself. So he puts down the gun and
takes the huge step to forsake his campaign to hurt her, in the process
subconsciously blocking off yet more of his vampire self. He offers himself
as companion. And Buffy accepts.
This is not a bad moment for Spike. When Buffy accepts his company, it's a
sign of approval from her unlike anything he's received before. I imagine
his heart soared. He still sympathizes, still wants her to feel better.
Maybe even more than before Buffy's approval, since that would only feed his
growing sense of devotion. But it's still a great moment for himself.
This is the first time since the chip was implanted that Spike has found
something to live *for* besides ripping the chip out of his head.
As he thinks through it more, he might conclude that it is the first step
upwards from a downward spiral that began with his arrival in Sunnydale back
in S2. Of course that would all be wild hope now. Probably filled with
illusion and further steps back. But still more than he's known in quite
some time.
None of that is terribly empathic. It's actually very self centered. And
requires not a lot more than basic sympathy, which itself serves self
interest, even if not consciously motivated by it. And it's pretty
naturalistic. Spike doesn't have to think through all I wrote. He just
responds to his feelings. One thing nice about evaluating Spike is how
impulsive he is. He tends to react to feelings before thinking them
through. So you can usually see them as they occur.
I wrote all of this because of how important I think your comment on empathy
is. I think there is less empathy here than there might seem at first
glance. (Note that Spike has no clue whatsoever what is wrong with Buffy.
Buffy would not tell him. The only thing he knows is that she's upset.)
But that in itself is one of the clues to Spikes limitations when it comes
to empathy. Watching how empathy does and does not work with Spike - past
and future both - tells a lot about Spike's evolving nature. Shows where
the vampire in him cannot leave. Shows what humanity he is capable of - and
is not.
For purposes of looking ahead, I believe it is specifically Spike's failure
to achieve human empathy where he most fails in his dealings with Buffy.
Even when he most desperately wants and tries to do it the human way, he can
never truly see things through a human's eyes, and cannot stop seeing them
through a vampire's eyes.
OBS