That freak named Spike
Oct. 23rd, 2006 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniSpike was anything but normal, because he just didn't fit in the norm, no matter how much he wanted to belong. Being an anomaly, as David Fury put it during Ats season 5, was his destiny. William looked like a freak among his Victorian peers and even sounded like a freak through his poetry.Vamp!William wasn't better. Angelus, Dru and probably Darla (and above all William himself!) tried to make the young vampire fit in his new life but he kept behaving in an abnormal way...seeking Slayers when he should have tried to avoid them. The Spike we met in season 2 wasn't a normal vampire, he obvioulsy stood out and Buffy's instinct recognized the anomaly, making the most of it.
From season 4 to season 6, we got a chipped Spike that couldn't fit anywhere. He could no longer be a vampire, but he was still a freak to the human beings. He could never have been one of the Scoobies.
And of course choosing to get his soul back was quite a freak thing to do. Once again souled Spike didn't seem to fit the norm, a norm that had been set by Angel. The Scoobies weren't that suprise btw...Why? Because by then they were used to Spike's oddity.
In the beginning of Wrecked, Buffy calls her lovemaking with Spike a “Freakshow”….Several times Spike calls himself a “monster”…and of course Xander called him a monster in Intervention before Glory’s minions came into the crypt, reminding him of his true status.
It's interesting that Spike never wanted to acknowledge the fact he was a freak. William thought that he was normal when human(cf the unfamous like you and I from FFL), and even as a young vampire he taught Angelus a lesson about what they were (we are vampires ! from FFL again). But when it came to his love life, he saw himself as a man (cf his speech about getting Drusilla back in Lovers' Walk). Both sides, vampires and humans, could only see him as a freak then. Even when he told Buffy that he was a monster, it's obvious that he thought of himself as a man in love. But I digressed...
The thing with freaks is that they are scary but they also make people laugh (I remember how fans call the first Ubervamp Noodles on the C&S board !). Sometimes Sunnydale was just a big circus. Spike was good at being a villain but also as a comic relief because he was such a freak. A long time ago that idea made me think of a movie and of a book.
Elephant Man is a good example, but the best one is Freaks directed by Tod Browning (who made the first Dracula with Bela Lugosi) in 1932. This movie is hard to watch, mostly because the “freaks” are played by deformed people who were performers coming from Barnum circus, which kinda makes us voyeurs, but it is also full of compassion. They are introduced in as normal people…The movie shows us their everyday life, their relationships. Actually the only characters who are truly monsters/villains are the strongman Hercules and the trapeze bimbo bitch Cleopatra, because they are defined entirely by remorseless greed. Yet they are normal and beautiful. A bad soul can be hidden beneath a nice face. This is the plot: the freaks aren’t those we though of, you have not to trust appearances. But, IMO, what is interesting in this movie is that it isn’t simply black and white: it doesn’t result in a “freaks = good, normal=bad”. Indeed, the clown Phroso is not a freak but he is good, and we sympathise with the freaks but we also must appreciate their capacity to be cruel in the name of their code of honour (“Offend one and you offend them all”). After all, this story is about revenge, a terrible revenge, and when the freaks crawl their way towards their cowering victims they look like horrible monsters really… That scene truly belongs to a horror movie!
BTW in French "vilain" also means ugly as if what was vile should be unattractive.
It isn't by chance if Joss wanted his vampires to look awful in game face, and most of the time the Villains only wore their game face (the Master, Luke, Spike when he fought Buffy). BTW in School Hard, the scene when Spike turned towards Dru and we could see his face changing, was really significant.
Once, in Paris, there was that place they called “une cour des miracles”. The people living there were beggars, thieves, disabled persons, freaks…Those places had their own prince, laws and rules. It was a city inside the city.
In Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo depicts this strange world. As a freak, Quasimodo belongs there while the beautiful Esmeralda could aspire to the "normal world" even though she's a gipsy. This character is mentioned in Crush by Willow and Tara. Indeed in season 5 Spike was Quasimodo (though I don’t think that Buffy was quite like Esmeralda). However B/S didn't develop like Q/S…Here I could digress again and make the connection between Quasimodo and Caliban, and I'm pretty sure that The Tempest inspired Hugo, but I won't.
In Latin quasi modo kind of means "almost like". Spike looks like a man, but he is not a man. As Quasimodo he dreams of romance with the beautiful girl and it seems unrequited. People often think that Quasimodo was only named after his deformed body, and of course it's a pun indeed but it is actually because of the Quasimodo Sunday(first Sunday after Easter). "Quasi modo geniti infantes "( "almost like newborn children") are the first words of the mass then. The archedeacon, Frollo, named the deformed boy after the feast for he found him that day.
It fit Spike's journey. Chipped Spike is definitely a quasimodo.
Victor Hugo carried on his study about the monsters with another character named Gwynplaine in another book. You might not know this novel since it is the less known of Hugo’s. Its title is L'Homme qui Rit (The Man Who Laughs)and it is Hugo's best novel according to me. If you know James Ellroy's crime novel The Black Dahlia, there is a hint about this story....Also you may have seen the movies based on the book.
Two episodes in BTVS made me think of this book, besides the monster theme and the Quasimodo references: “Hush” and “OMWF”…
This book is about human condition even if there is a political plot (about democracy). There are many themes. Among them, communication (something JW studied in “Hush”), redemption, the epic of the soul, justice and also love (between the monster and a blind woman named Dea). It is also a kind of “Bildungsroman” a la Herman Hesse, because it's about a journey, Gwynplaine’s journey. One of the things I love the most in this novel is the idea of the old man named Ursus (his name means "Bear" in latin!) living with a wolf named Homo!
Homo can’t speak, being a wolf, it just screams while Ursus is a ventriloquist, able to imitate all the animal cries. He is a kind of poet too who often uses soliloques. He talks all the time but doesn’t communicate…
So by using Hugo's works, I think that Spike started as a Quasimodo but could end as Gwynplaine....ie redeemed!
The Man Who Laughs takes place in England in the XVIIth Century. So "L'Homme qui rit" is named Gwynplaine. He's a man who has been disabled on purpose when he was a baby by a gang of Comprachicos (boys-buyers in Spanish)...Those villains make their living by mutilating and disfiguring children, who are then forced to beg for alms, or who are exhibited as carnival freaks. They kidnapped him then made him a monster by carving a perpetual grin on his face, dooming him to appear being laughing even when he was not laughing. His face became a mask of comedy, but it is also the face of a tragic fate. Gwynplaine is a freak, a fair number who causes the laugh of the audience by his awful grimace. So when I saw the Gentlemen from Hush and their horrid perpetual grin, I thought of this book! By the way this grin, plus their incredible courtesies, is what makes them that horrible. Hugo wrote “rien n’est plus sinistre que le rire immobile” (“Nothing is more sinister than the still laugh”). I’ve always thought that clowns were tragic characters.
I also thought suddenly of OMWF: when Sweet is singing for Dawn, he suddenly removes his grinning mouth from his face and holds it…It reminded me of the Comprachicos who had stolen from Gywnplaine his own laugh while condemning him to make people laugh at him. He is a freak and a jester. In thoses times some human monsters were made for the kings’ entertainment thanks to some surgery, like the cock-man who had to give the cock cry to say the hours in the palace. I see the vampirism as a similar alienation. The Spike we know was born when Dru sired him, and his journey started before the chip IMO when Dru deserted him for Angelus. Gwynplaine’s journey begins when the Comprachicos abandon him. Then he is taken in by Ursus who represents the goodness in the novel.
Nobody takes Gywnplaine seriously as he wasn't real (That reminds me of somebody...) because of his face, even when he delivers a speech at the Parliament prophesying a revolution. Indeed, underneath the freak mask there is a Lord, lord Clancharlie (his true identity is discovered eventually and Gwynplaine returns briefly to his peers in order to defend the "misérables"). In his speech to the Lords, he says :
"Je suis celui qui vient des profondeurs. Mylords, vous êtes les grands et les riches. C'est périlleux. Vous profitez de la nuit. Mais prenez garde, il y a une grande puissance, l'aurore. L'aube ne peut être vaincue. Elle arrivera. Elle arrive." => "I am the one who comes from the depths (I've been nearly tempted to translate that into "from beneath"!). Mylords, you are the Grand and the rich men. It's dangerous. You take advantage of the night. But be careful, there is a big power, the daybreak. Dawn can't be defeated. It will come. It's coming" (Hey hey! Dawn is the key here too!)
But the Lords don’t want to hear him, they can’t. They just laugh at him. Who does listen to the freaks? In OMWF, Giles says to Spike he’ll never want his opinion!
According to the political plot, the Lords turn to be the true freaks. Gywnplaine who was a Lord once, was revived through his mutilation and through his long journey. There is a first rebirth when he finds again his lord Clancharlie identity, but it’s a false one. In fact he is still selfless at this moment, as Spike was at the beginning of season 7(or like Anya).
It seems obvious then that Gwynplaine’s true identity isn’t to be lord Clancharlie but being the disfigured man loved by Dea. In Hugo’s book Dea, the woman whom Gywnplaine saved as she was a nearly-dead infant and fell in love with later, represents his soul. When she dies in the end of the novel, he decides to reach her in death. However, according to Hugo, this suicide isn’t a renunciation but an Ascension…He has faced temptations, he has tried his best, he has failed at the Parliament, and left putting out to sea but eventually he is saved.
So I think that Spike’s true self isn’t to be William the poet again, but being the special vampire loved by Buffy and who was loved by her. In Not Fade Away, he found again his William identity when reciting his poetry, but it is as a warrior that he ended up on screen (saving a baby like Gywnplaine saved baby Dea), just like it's Spike the vampire who sacrificed himself in Chosen.
Being a vampire is Spike's disability. It isn't what prevents him form being a good man (au contraire !), but it is part of his flamboyance, it is the key of his uniqueness.
This must be why I don't usually enjoy AU All humans fanfictions regardless of how good the writing may be. I love Spike's journey, and I loved William in the FFL flashbacks, but as soon as he's human Spike is no longer Spike.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 01:58 pm (UTC)That's exactly how I feel. Spike being a vampire is part of why I love him so much. Lose that and he just isn't Spike any more.
Wonderful post! I remember seeing Freaks for the first time a couple of years ago. It horrified me, but fascinated me at the same time. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about it at first, as disability is an issue very close to my heart, but strangely enough I didn't find it as offensive as I thought I would.
I'm putting this post in my memories. When I've got more time, I'm going to take it out and read it again. There is so much to think about! It really is an excellent post. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 07:46 pm (UTC)I saw Freaks for the first time when I was very young (10 years old or so)and was traumatized! I watched it again years later and now I've got the DVD.
I think it's subversive rather than offensive. Browning was aweird man but he made a unique film. It's disturbing because he shows stuff that we don't necessarily wnat to see.
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Date: 2006-10-23 04:00 pm (UTC)Wonderful and thoughtful post - thank you.
Just a tiny thing that ties in with this: Xander is scared of clowns - they're the stuff of his nightmares.
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Date: 2006-10-23 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 10:07 pm (UTC)Love talking about Spike -- thanks for indulging me so deliciously.
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Date: 2006-10-24 08:18 am (UTC)But why did you f-lock the entry? You don't want to share your views with the rest of the fandom? Because after reading it I immediately thought about reccing it on two or three boards before I noticed the sign of lock in front of the title of the entry.
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Date: 2006-10-24 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-24 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-24 10:11 pm (UTC)