I guess Wood is an exception 😛.. Anyway, that's not at all logical for me. If he can feel emotions (like all the ones you have said) when he is soulless, for the people he cares about, that means he has that human capacity and so it's his choice to care or not care about people. But the soul doesn't give to him the capacity to feel emotions about people he doesn't care. That's a no sense for me. He already had that capacity without a soul. And honestly, we are humans, we have souls and still there are people on earth we don't care, so this argument........ doesn't work for me.
If soulles Spike can feel guilt, then he doesn't need a soul. Because he is basically all soul having already. Guilt is specifically something associated with a soul in the Buffyverse. Which funnily enough, makes Spike one of the worst vampires ever because he had choice and agency over his actions. If he can feel guilt, he has a conscience and he could have chosen not to murder, rape and torture for 120 years. But he did it anyway. Which to me means Spike deserves a dusting, even with a soul because he is a murderer who chose to be one.
Black and white view? Who looks at things with such a narrow mind? I don't do colors, I do logic. For Buffy to just nilly willy walk around every night and kill vampires, the rules need to be clear. Because there is a difference between killing an evil being with no free will and a being with free will. You can attribute as much humanity as you want to Spike but you CAN'T stop there. You need to extrapolate that in every direction. If Spike basically doesn't need a soul, like you suggest, it means he had free will over his actions and decisions. Meaning he decided on his own to murder, rape and torture for 120 years and accumulate thousands of victims. He deserves death row and in the case of a vampire, dusting. Soul or no soul, because according to you he didn't need a soul to have choice. Which funnily enough, also according to you, makes him one of the WORST beings that ever existed in the Buffyverse. See, funny how logic changes the picture isn't it? But hey, I keep my logic, you keep your romantic view of a 'human' stalker/murderer/rapist/torturer...everyone goes home happy.
You just described plenty of humans. There are plenty who wouldn't lift a finger to help. Or who only care about their family/loved ones. Like it or not, there's plenty of humans who are like that. So really, Spike is just like a human. And he should be judged harsher than an actual soulles vampire. Because he is what we call a mass murderer who chose to be one.
See that's the issue I have. Soulless vampires were supposed to represent the worst of humanity; by virtue of being humans-turned-demons they are exxagerated and warped versions of our worst possible selves. If they are then shown to exhibit some of our better traits then doesn't the metaphor become somewhat diluted? 😕
She's not rogue - that's kinda the point. She's been fed a clear "Them" and "Us" dualism by Giles and the Watcher's Council (in a sense the WC is the demon justice system - Judge, Jury and Executioner). It doesn't make her or Giles - or any one else - intrinsically "bad" - or a mass murderer. They've both internalised patriarchal ideology as hegemony. It's her rejection of patriarchy, her awareness that she's colluded with it, that causes the complexity of S7 - it culminates in the power vacuum in Empty Places - that's why it's so chaotic. Ideology constructs reality - in the absence of an ideological underpinning meaning disappears (signs - which are place holders in the real - are empty). It's what's happening to Giles in the mini but the level of complexity has been racked up to make a critique of gender, race and class. No one's saying there's no line - it's simply that the line is relative to everything else around it.
. Alternatively, humans are just like - or worse than - vampires. Which is kinda the point being made in the Giles mini.
Buffy's war, the council's war and the war of every slayer against vampires (specifically, different from demons in general) was always a preemptive one. Vampires were demons without souls and therefor without free will to chose to be anything other than demons. Demons with blood lust, a direct connection to evil which compelled them to do evil. They are slaves to their fundamental nature. They show said nature differently, which is in large part due to the former human who they form their personality out of. But it's all the same. They kill, rape and torture. Just for the fun of it. That made the war ok. It made it morally right for Buffy to kill them even when they got out of their graves without having done any harm to anyone. Buffy was saving future lives by killing preemptively.
I don't think they're necessarily symbolic of oppressed groups. I think they draw attention to the structure of otherness and otherness makes oppression possible. They have different functions at different times. According to Nina Auerbach in Our Vampires, Ourselves "Each age embraces the vampire it needs" (which is why I think we'll get Roux).
I don't know. Isn't that the difference between moral absolutism and moral relativism? Best ask a philosopher...don't ask more than one - you'll get conflicting answers. 😉
Buffy certainly puts more emphasis on it. As does Spike. But then there's Buffy's "Why does everyone in this house think I'm still in love with Spike" remark. This seems to imply she loved him soulless. There's also this line (shooting script - Never Leave Me) "There's a man in there underneath that monster. A man who - even when he had no soul - struggled to find redemption". I'm not being deliberately provocative - what I am saying is, I think there's a certain ambivalence towards the soul even in the TV series. The characters might believe in it - I'm not sure to what extent the text does - except as a marker of difference. Perhaps the soul just allows the justification of belief?
Yes, it is the demons on BtVS - and more so on AtS - who have often been intentionally used as symbolic of oppressed and alienated minority groups. The only vampire who was intended to be a social outcast was Angel, and that was only enabled by the fact that he had a soul and so had one foot in both human and demon worlds. But then this aspect isn't really explored until he gets his own show, where his apartness is set against the backdrop of L.A. as a locus of demon otherness and hybridity. Even so, Angel himself isn't oppressed in any way that identifies him with the demon communities.
There's also the fact that it was a gypsy elder woman who first restored Angel's soul. We don't know how much knowledge she had of metaphysics of it.
