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[rusty_halo]

Hehe ... a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/King of the Hill crossover. Fun.

I spent the weekend catching up on some fic. Read everything I hadn't already read by Caro and Mint Witch. And read some BuffyX and Jane Davitt.

Also got some archiving done, which is always good.

Friday I worked for 14 hours; didn't get home until 10pm. And I'd only slept about 4 hours the night before. That wasn't very fun. But at least I got a lot of work done. Then I came home and slept for 14 hours, which left me feeling crappy. Sleeping for 14 hours? Really not a very good idea. I'm just finally starting to feel alive again.

I'm so happy about the con reports indicating that JM will be in the BtVS spin-off (if there is one). First of all, it means that Spike's not going to die! :) Plus, unlike those who don't want a spinoff because it won't include Spuffy, or who grudgingly would prefer a spinoff but still wish to see a S/B ending ... I'm totally on board with a Buffy-free Spike spinoff. In fact I'd prefer to see Spike's story with no Buffy. I've had quite enough of Spike mooning over Buffy and begging for crumbs, and I've had quite enough of Buffy's self-righteous, repressed, emotionally stunted coldness. To see Spike escape from his Buffy obsession and move on with his life ... to see Spike interact with other characters and other situations ... to see Spike treated as a character in his own right instead of always being secondary to Buffy's "lesson" ... it's like my ultimate fantasy come true! PLEASE let there be a Spike spin-off!

I'm debating about whether to post here about the relevance of authorial intent or to archive a few more stories before I go to sleep. Since I'm already tired and starting to feel incoherent, I think I'm going to go with the fic archiving. Since anything I write at this hour probably won't make much sense anyway.

Comments

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I'm debating about whether to post here about the relevance of authorial intent

Ok, now I'm curious. What about authorial intent?

Authorial Intent

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I think I've lost my ability to construct a coherent sentence. You know that Simpsons episode where Lisa thinks she's getting stupider as she gets older? That's how I feel. Or maybe it's just lack of sleep. (So, apologies in advance if this doesn't make sense.)

Anyway ... um, someone on Buffyology raised the question of how much influence we should give the author's intent when we're interpreting a work. I tried to post some thoughts there, but I tend to feel like a 3-year-old attempting to communicate with a bunch of rocket scientists when I'm on that list. So I thought about posting about it in a less-pressured environment (ie here). Although now it occurs to me that most of the people reading this are writers so they probably won't agree with what I say anyway.

The most heated (and fun) debate I've ever gotten into on BAPS (I love that list) was about the relevance of authorial intent. Some people were saying that, since ME says Spike couldn't be redeemed without a soul (which is debatable itself), we just have to agree. The author gets the final say; soulless redemptionists simply have to "give up" what they'd been arguing for the past year and a half. And that's just nonsense in my opinion. We saw Spike on a path toward redemption in seasons five and six. So what if Mutant Enemy didn't see it. David Fury can't even figure out what was going on in The Hunchback of Notre Dame; we're supposed to allow him to tell us what to think about our favorite TV show? I don't think so. As far as I'm concerned, once the text has been produced, the writer doesn't have any more say than anyone else; the readers' opinions are just as relevant, as long as they are supported by the text. Soulless redemptionist was clearly in the text as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not going to change my opinion because someone else tells me to.

Re: Authorial Intent

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

raised the question of how much influence we should give the author's intent when we're interpreting a work

Generally speaking, I give the greatest weight to the author's interpretation (bearing in mind that sometimes what one writes is not one gets across - there was a passage in "Glimpses", for example, that I meant one way but which every single person who has read it took another. ::shrug:: It worked.).

However, David Fury is not the only writer working for ME. Herein lies the difficulty of taking any scriptwriter's interpretation as gospel. Not only is he not the only scriptwriter, but there are a dozen others who add interpretative text and subtext - directors, cinematographers, actors, sound editors, film editors - what we see on our television screen is as different from the original script as a replica of David is from the metal armature around which it's built.

Speaking specifically to Spike's story arc - honestly, I think much of that boils down to theological perspective. As a non-Christian, I have a much more fluid notion of what "redemption" entails - namely, real, internal change that moves one from a point of imbalance to one of balance. (For non-religion geeks - real change that lets a person internalize a value system and stop committing acts of evil.) For folks of other religious/theological beliefs, redemption may be intimately tied up with atonement (whereas I believe the important act is the purposeful cessation of evil actions.)

I think that canon very definitely supported the theory that Spike could have been redeemed sans soul - and could be said, indeed, to have achieved it. He was well on his way at the least, even in SR (in his shattering guilt after the rape attempt). A vampire, feeling guilty? A 'soulless, evil thing' seeking change to make himself over, make himself better? Isn't that - the real desire for change - de facto redemption, in and of itself?

God, I love this show. I'm really going to miss it when it's off the air.

Some people were saying that, since ME says Spike couldn't be redeemed without a soul (which is debatable itself), we just have to agree.

If that was what they intended to convey, they did a piss-poor job of it. I could write a story in which it was made obvious that Spike couldn't be redeemed as he was...but that's not the story they told us. The story I saw weekly was a man tentatively seeking redemption, and getting slapped back down every time he stepped outside his predetermined role as Big Bad.

If they'd wanted to tell the story of nature overriding environment, they'd have had to make the Scoobies supportive of Spike's journey, and then had him fail, anyway....what they told, imo, was the story of a man fighting against his own nature and against societal pressure to conform to that nature in order to make changes, out of love for a woman. (Emotionally healthy? Uh, no. But heroic? Oh, yeah.)

Re: Authorial Intent

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

>>However, David Fury is not the only writer working for ME.<<

True. And part of the problem I have with the "authorial intent is everything" POV is that it's impossible for us to know what's really going on in the author's head. The example on Buffyology was that Joss says that the Cheese Man in "Restless" means nothing; but is Joss telling the truth? Maybe Joss just wants us to come up with our own interpretations; maybe it had a meaning originally but he decided against it later; maybe it's the key to understanding the finale and he doesn't want to give it away yet; who knows? Or to take another example, David Fury said that Anyanka definitely doesn't have a soul, followed a week later by Jane Espenson saying that Anyakna does have a soul. Who are we supposed to believe? And then you have DeKnight flat-out lying ("Tara will die over my dead body").

Which is why I think that any interpretation that depends mostly on the author's intent will be flawed, because we don't know the author's intent. There's no way we can be 100% certain that we know what's going on inside another person's head.

>>For folks of other religious/theological beliefs, redemption may be intimately tied up with atonement (whereas I believe the important act is the purposeful cessation of evil actions.)<<

Same here; I don't get the remorse/atonement thing. What's it going to solve? Spike's victims are dead. I'd really rather see him move on and start "living" a better life rather than brooding over the past.

>>I think that canon very definitely supported the theory that Spike could have been redeemed sans soul - and could be said, indeed, to have achieved it. He was well on his way at the least, even in SR (in his shattering guilt after the rape attempt). A vampire, feeling guilty? A 'soulless, evil thing' seeking change to make himself over, make himself better? Isn't that - the real desire for change - de facto redemption, in and of itself?<<

See, I agree with you. I think canon did support soulless redemption, and I pretty much do think he achieved it (which is why I find the whole soul thing annoying and unncessary). It's supported within the text of the show ... yet all writers' interviews claim the opposite. "As long as he hasn't a soul, Spike cannot be redeemed." (Jane Espenson) "I do feel strongly that Spike is evil." (David Fury) Plus millions of utterly moronic Marti Noxon interviews in which its clear that she doesn't even see Spike as a character in his own right; he's just part of Buffy's bad boyfriend lesson. It's only in season seven that any of the writers began using the word "redemption" in connection with Spike.

From the many writers' interviews I've heard and read, I've come to the conclusion that the writers almost certainly did not intend to tell a redemption story for Spike in seasons five and six. So the question is whether I can continue to love the story of Spike's redemption throughout those seasons, or do I have to accept that the story I loved didn't actually exist (because the writers say that they weren't writing it)? But like I said, I agree with you in that the canon is there, the redemption story is there ... whether they intended to write it or not.

>>what they told, imo, was the story of a man fighting against his own nature and against societal pressure to conform to that nature in order to make changes, out of love for a woman. (Emotionally healthy? Uh, no. But heroic? Oh, yeah.)<<

See, that's what I think they told too. But I don't think it's what they intended to tell. :)