:: Spike and Buffy: An Ironic
Twist in Story of Psyche & Eros ::
Written By
ShadowKat
This is for all those
people who have entertained me with B/S fan-fiction and a result of two recent
threads on ATP board about Light/Dark and Psyche & Eros which intrigued me.
Before I go into my analysis, I would like to discuss irony. What is irony? It
is a literary device used to dramatic and often comedic effect to emphasize a
theme or idea by showing us the opposite of what we expect. A perfect example of
irony is the title: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We expect an Amazon or muscular
female/male, at least six feet tall, to be fighting demons, instead we are given
a tiny ex-cheerleader valley girl. By showing us the opposite of our
expectations - the writers force us to face our own prejudices and laugh at
them. This is why Joss Whedon prefers that we use the full title. His show is
founded in irony - the only guarantee in Btvs is we will always see the opposite
of what we expect.
This brings me to the story of Eros and Psyche , which is not a myth by the way
- but an ancient Greek story told by Apuleius in Metamorphoses. This is a story
about the soul falling in love with love. In the story - Psyche - the soul -
after fleeing love, must accomplish several tasks to regain love(Eros) trust and
join him on the Immortal plain. Eros is described in Greek myth as "lust which
drives men and gods to sex" (see Homer's Iliad). He is thought of as "cruel,
cunning and umanageable, armed with arrows or love bites". In Plato's Symposium
- Eros is described as the energy that drives us to spend our lives seeking our
other self. Eros = unbridled/unregulated emotion. Emotion without a navigational
system, without a compass - the subconscious, dark, murky, passionate,
primitive. Psyche is described in myth as compass or soul, the consciousness,
pure thought, detached, objective, blinding like a light. Eros and Psyche need
each other- Psyche needs Eros to ground her, to make her feel. Eros needs Psyche
to regulate him. Together they produce "joy" apart "despair".
If there was ever a character that represented Eros - it is Spike. Spike loves
with his whole being. His love is fierce and consuming and dark. He is
manipulative and cunning and often vicious- similar to the Greek description of
Eros. In fiction the vampire is used as a metaphor for "dark love or seduction"
(See Ann Rice's books, Dracula for examples.) And Demons represent emotion or
the dark depths of the unconscious self. In Beauty and the Beasts - Buffy's
psychologist describes the dark part of the mind in this manner: "Look Buffy -
any person who claims to be *totally* sane is either lying or not very bright. I
mean, everyone has problems. Everybody has demons, right?" Demons - the emotions
bursting inside us, uncontrolled, which the soul/psyche struggles to keep in
check. When we are consumed by emotion - it can drive us towards horrible acts,
our conscience or thought sometimes is the only thing that keeps us in check. A
vampire consumed by bloodlust - is emotion unbridled, primitive, and cunning,
nothing holds him/her back. Except of course, if you are Spike and have a nice
government chip imbedded in your skull. But the chip does not change the fact
that Spike is a slave to his emotions. It's ironic - Eros is the slave to love,
instead of Psyche, the master manipulator has become love's slave.
Yet we need emotion, without it -as Angelus states in PASSION (Btvs Season
2):"we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank... Without passion, we'd
be truly dead." Isn't that what Buffy - our Psyche- has become this past season?
Her mother died and she lost some of her passion for life. Regained it briefly
to sacrifice herself for her sister, only to be brought back to life
passionless. For the first several episodes of Season 6 Btvs, Buffy walks around
in a sort of daze. She can't feel. She can't care. As Lanna De Rossa stated in
her post on OMWF (B C &S )- "slaying had been Buffy's passion/her fire and now
she's just going through the motions." That is until she kisses Spike, then
suddenly we start to see a glimmer of Buffy's old rage. Eros/Spike has awakened
the passion in Buffy/Psyche, at least while he is present.
Spike's chip has in a sense regulated his unbridled passions - at least enough
for the human part of him to love Buffy. But he is still a slave to them. He is
still Eros, still manipulative and cunning. He will do anything to have her.
Emotion drives him. Emotion/Eros asks us to go into the dark - to be dirty - to
be physical - to not question. While thought tells us to flee the dark, to
question it, as Buffy does. Like Psyche in the story, Buffy repeatedly flees
from love. The soul/Psyche thinks too much and is afraid to become Eros/love's
slave. Yet oddly it is Eros who becomes the slave, not Pysche. Eros who desires
Psyche's blinding light beyond all else. Psyche appears to remain immune. Psyche
is right to be afraid of unbridled emotion - love unchecked can become a
dangerous, demonic thing.
In the story Eros and Psyche - Aphrodite (goddess of love) sends Eros to kill
Pysche out of jealousy, she sees Psyche as a threat. In School Hard (Season 2,
Btvs) - Drusilla tells Spike to kill Buffy - "Kill her for me Spike, Kill her
for princess." And later in Fool For Love flashback scene - Drusilla asks Spike
- "Why can't you kill her?" (Season 5, Btvs). Like Eros - Spike's passion for
Psyche leads him to do cunning and dark acts - some fairly frightening - like
his attempted rape of Willow in The Initiative and the kidnapping of Buffy in
Crush and finally that dark, disturbing scene in Dead Things, where he tells her
she belongs in the dark with him? (Love can make us do the wacky and it can be
frightening at times.) Spike's actions are very similar to Eros - who in effect
does the same things - he takes Psyche away from her family and friends and
tries to keep her in the dark. (In the story, he spirits her away to his palace
and she can only visit him at night in the dark. He even tells her that she is
sleeping with a monster. That if she ever sees him it's over. ) Eros/Spike is
afraid of the very thing he loves - the white shining light of reason or the
soul. He is afraid if light is shown on him - he will lose that which he loves
and literally, at least in Spike's case, combust. Just as Psyche/Buffy is afraid
of the very thing she craves - the dark unbidden passion of love. And they are
right to be afraid. As the psychologist in Beauty and the Beasts so aptly
states:
"Look, lots of people lose themselves in love. It's, it's no shame. They write
songs about it. The hitch is, you can't stay lost. Sooner or later, you... you
have to get back to yourself. If you can't... Well, love becomes your master,
and you're just its dog."
In the story Eros and Psyche - Psyche becomes Aphrodite's (goddess of love)
slave. In Btvs - Eros has become Psyche's lapdog. Muzzled. He is not enlightened
or grounded by Psyche any more than in the story Psyche is enriched by Eros, at
least not until she completes the tasks and frees herself from Aphrodite
(Goddess of Love)'s slavery and joins him in the heavens.
Irony. Instead of enslaving Psyche, Btvs has enslaved Eros. Instead of Psyche
being forced to complete tasks to gain Eros' affections, Eros is being forced to
complete tasks to gain Psyche's trust and affection. Instead of Psyche having to
free herself from Aphrodite, Eros must. They've flipped the metaphor.
In both stories - Btvs and the Eros & Psyche myth - Psyche does flee from love.
She does it to rejoin her family. In the myth - she leaves love to see her
sisters who convince her to shine a light on Eros - revealing a man instead of a
monster in the crypt. Her light burns him and he sends her away. In Btvs - Buffy
leaves Eros to rejoin her family (friends) and they (Riley) convince her to
shine a light on Spike - revealing a monster with amoral ends housing a bunch of
little monsters in his crypt. Her light burns him and she leaves, exiting into
the light and returning to her family - from which he's kept her. (As You Were,
Season 6, Btvs). Once again - rational thought has shut out emotion. Buffy has
done this before - way back in Season 5, Into the Woods - Xander accuses her of
shutting down in this manner. "See, what I think, you got burned with Angel,
then Riley shows up?.You shut down, Buffy." Xander doesn't get it - she got more
than burned by Angel - she became enslaved, and people she cared about got hurt.
Same thing happens with Spike - she got burned when she showed the light on him,
realized what she was doing to them both. Psyche/Buffy cannot afford to be Eros'
slave - yet at the same time she cannot afford to shut him out completely
either. She needs him.
Last season showed how much Buffy needed Spike - when her mother dies, Buffy
completely shuts down until - Dawn attempts to bring her mother back to life,
then the barriers break and Buffy has a burst of emotion. If you look back at
Season 5, you'll notice her bursts of emotion tend to be linked to Spike. In the
last scene of Fool For Love - it is Spike who finds Buffy on the back steps
sobbing and Spike who sits down beside her, comforting her. In Into the Woods -
it is Spike who forces her to see what Riley is doing and ignites her rage. In
Forever, Buffy has shut Dawn out, to the extent Dawn is convinced she is
completely alone and Buffy doesn't care. So Spike helps Dawn resurrect the
mother - the metaphors are interesting - they go to Doc who in many ways reminds
me of the character Charon in the Greek myth. Charon is the ferryman of the
rivers of Hades or the underworld. He is an old chap and he transports souls
only one way. Doc sends them to get an egg from a Ghorra demon that is described
as a three headed monster at the entrance of the Hell Mouth, with a snake like
tail. This reminds me of Cerberus - the watchdog of Hades, a three-headed dog.
Besides having three heads it also has a snake's tail. What is accomplished in
Forever is not the return of the mother - so much as the breaking of Buffy's
emotional walls. She breaks down at the end and lets her sister in, at least
part way. Then we come to the last five or six episodes - in these episodes,
Eros/Spike takes on the role of protector - he protects Dawn - who we can argue
is a portion of Buffy's soul, possibly the portion of her psyche that can let
Eros in? (I might be reaching there.) In the Eros and Psyche myth - Psyche loses
all hope of completing her torturous tasks for Aphrodite (who reminds me an
awful lot of Glory by the way) and almost throws herself from a tower. In Btvs -
Dawn has opened the dimensions and knows she must throw herself from a tower. In
the myth - the tower stops Psyche. In Btvs - Buffy goes instead, saving the part
of herself - that is the best part, the part that can still feel? But before
Buffy jumps - it is interesting to note that Spike goes first, Eros jumps -
failing the test, just as Psyche would have failed if she jumped in the Eros and
Psyche myth. (Instead Psyche travels to the underworld and completes Aphrodite's
last task, the retrieval of a magical box which like Pandora, she makes the
mistake of opening and is overtaken by the "death of sleep." So in both the myth
and tv show - Psyche/Buffy momentarily dies.)
When Buffy returns in Season 6 - she is pure Psyche. Detached from emotion.
Coming slowly out of the "sleep of death", possibly still under it's spell.
Instead of fleeing from Eros/Spike - she seeks him out. She seeks emotion - not
cognizant of the fact that her presence re-ignites his fires as well. Since her
death - Eros/Spike has become somewhat tame, his fires have calmed. Her presence
serves to re-ignite them. He feels alive again as he sings in OMWF: "I died so
many years ago - but you can make me feel it isn't so". And he returns the favor
- she also feels alive in his presence, but his passion, his unbridled heat is
scorching and the blaze threatens to consume them both. She can't love him, if
she does she risks losing herself in love. She knows that "falling in love with
love" is a bad thing, it can't possibly last. Some say it isn't real at all,
just lust. I beg to differ. It is love - it's just not very healthy.
Years ago - I fell in love with love, it lasted about three months before the
guy turned mean and tried to remake me in his image. At the time it felt right
but it wasn't, it was killing me, sapping me of my energy of my soul. I became
lost in it. Love became my master: the perfect example of the bad
twenty-something relationship.
Without a compass or navigational system - Eros is fire, consuming, no brakes.
As Drusilla so aptly described in Crush: "Oh we can love quite well, just not
very wisely." Demon love is Eros. For instance, Angelus may have loved Buffy -
but it was brutal and destructive to them both. As Spike states Passion: "If you
ask me, I find myself preferring the old Buffy-whipped Angelus. This new,
improved one is not playing with a full sack." The Buffy-whipped version, had a
compass, had brakes, had a soul. This version doesn't and is a slave to his
passions. Love can be a brutal thing without restraints. Think about it -
without brakes, where would our passions lead us?
In the myth - Eros enslaves Psyche. In Btvs - Buffy enslaves Spike. As he puts
it in Normal Again : "Make me fall in love with her and turn me into her sodden
sex slave." Spike doesn't have the benefit of her compass - he can't regulate
his passion for her, it consumes him causing him to act irrationally and
self-destructively. He would do anything for her or because of her - including
stake himself. Love has become the lust demon's master; it has chained him and
whipped him into submission. But it has not redeemed him. No, it controls him
like a puppet on strings, making him do it's bidding. As he points out in
Lover's Walk: "Love isn't brains, children, it's blood... (clasps his chest)
blood screaming inside you to work its will. *I* may be love's bitch, but at
least *I'm* man enough to admit it." And again in Crush - "You think I like
having you in here? Destroying everything that was me, until all that's left is
you, in a dead shell. (scoffs) You say you hate it, but you won't leave." Or in
As You Were when she tells him she's just using him and he replies, somewhat
painfully, "not really complaining here." He is so far gone; he doesn't care if
she beats him as long as she does.
Buffy who has the benefit of a "psyche" can see past the emotion to rational
thought. She can regulate it - shut it off. At the end of As You Were - Buffy
walks into the light, Psyche moves out from under the depths of emotion into the
blinding light of the soul. But wait - where is light without darkness or
darkness without light? They need each other, they feed off each other. It's
really not an "either/ or" as we like to think of it, it is more of an "and".
She requires emotion, love, without that she floats in the ether, groundless,
detached. As the first slayer states way back in Intervention: "Love is pain,
and the Slayer forges strength from pain. Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the
pain. It is your nature. Love will bring you to your gift."
The slayer/psyche needs love to forge strength from it. Emotion is necessary.
Buffy knows this - she told Kendra this herself way back in Season 2's What's My
Line Part II:
Kendra: Emotions are weakness, Buffy. You shouldn't entertain dem.
Buffy: Kendra, my emotions give me power. They're total assets!
(edited for length)
Buffy: Oh, I know so. You're good, but power alone isn't enough. A good fighter
needs to know how to improvise, to go with the flow. Uh-uh, seriously, don't get
me wrong, y-you really do have potential.
Kendra: (holds her knife ready) Potential? I could wipe de floor wit you right
now!
Buffy: (looks Kendra in the eye) That would be anger you're feeling.You feel it,
right? How the anger gives you fire? A Slayer needs that.
Buffy has the advantage in this relationship. Unlike Psyche, she can access
emotion from another source. Spike has lit her fuse and she is beginning slowly
to do it again on her own. She was able to do it before he arrived. Spike on the
other hand is at a disadvantage; he does not have a compass. So how does he get
one? How can he join Psyche/Buffy without one? Will he be stuck in the lower
levels forever? Forever denied light? In a flip of the Psyche and Eros story -
Eros is the one who must complete the tasks to acquire Psyche's affections. Eros
is the one who must break the chains of Aphrodite's/love's enslavement and
somehow find a means of regulating the emotions that churn inside him, so that
he does not remain love's puppet. But how does a soulless vampire, the epitome
of emotion unleashed, learn to control the primitive passions that boil inside
him? As previously mentioned in Anne's Psyche and Eros post on ATP board -
Psyche had to accomplish several tasks to join Eros on the Immortal plain. If
they are really flipping this myth - then it would stand to reason that Eros
must do the same - possibly even take the same twisted journey, facing his own
demons and fears along the way so that he can eventually join Psyche on the
mortal plain?
After all this is Btvs - not Greek myth, here the immortals are evil demon scum
regulated to the nether world or darkness. It is far better to be mortal. So in
order to join Psyche/Buffy in the light - Eros/Spike must give up a portion of
himself -his immortality? Just as Psyche/Buffy gave up a portion of herself -
her mortality to save Dawn or to join Eros in heaven? And if Eros does
accomplish this seemingly impossible task - what then? Will we in fact have
light and darkness lying hand in hand like lovers on the mortal plain, the flip
side of the Eros and Psyche myth?
Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your thoughts.