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.)
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Re: Authorial Intent
Date: 2003-03-03 08:33 am (UTC)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.)