Those choices heroes make...
Aug. 6th, 2004 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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pandarus wrote an excellent post pondering the superhero narrative and its implications. In case anyone hasn’t read it yet, do so, it’s here. I mostly agree with her arguments. However, a minor sideissue made me ponder some contrary thoughts, or rather, an addendum from another perspective. She wrote, in a comment:
It's in the same category, imho, as Clark refusing to kill and then profiting because Lex does it for him, or Buffy refusing to kill Ben and then profiting because Giles does it for her. This happens an awful lot in Western popular fiction, and I think it's dishonest. It's the whole have-your-cake-and-eat-it thing.
I disagreed on Buffy’s account, my main argument being that Buffy, as opposed to Clark, does not in fact profit from Giles’ deed. She would if the narrative were constructed in the usual way – i.e. if Giles, by killing Ben, were saving her life, or Dawn’s life. (To take a Jossverse situation which actually does use this particular narrative structure – take Lilah killing Billy at the end of Billy. Which saves Cordelia, both in the sense of sparing her the necessity of doing it and saving her from the immediate threat of Billy; Cordelia, of course, is at this point, alas, in her St. Cordy phase (though her earlier argument with Lilah is one of the last flickerings of Queen C.). As it is, Giles undoubtedly does save a lot of people from getting their brains scrambled, at the very least. But this is not why he kills Ben. The argument he gives just before doing it is that “Glory would make Buffy pay for this mercy”. I.e. he does it to save Buffy’s life. Which he doesn’t accomplish. As a matter of fact, Giles killing Ben does not help anyone within the narrative of the show. Buffy dies and would have died regardless of whether or not Ben (and Glory) had continued to live. Her traumatic resurrection against her will, the long depression, the awful job, the inability to reconnect with her friends for a long time, the self-destructive affair with Spike – all this would have happened in a world with Ben and Glory in it just as surely as it did with them dead.
Now you can argue that Buffy’s decision to accept Ben’s surrender and let him live was irresponsible (in regards to the aforementioned future brain suck victims outside of Sunnydale), just as you can argue whether the fact she did not pursue Dru in Crush and never bothered to dust Harmony was irresponsible towards future victims. The narrative of BTVS never presents her as perfect. But it did let her choose a certain code. In reviews of Not Fade Away, I’ve repeatedly come across the comment that Buffy would not have made the decision to kill Lindsey; this usually was not meant as a compliment but as a proof of Angel, who did make this decision, being the superior and more “honest” character for it. (Often, the Giles-killing-Ben incident was mentioned in those same reviews as an example of Buffy not having the guts of getting her hands dirty.) (Presumably, the fact that if Buffy does make the conscious decision to kill someone outside of the usual vampire staking routine, whether it's Faith in Graduation or Anya in Selfless, she does not want anyone else involved and goes after the parties in question alone never is considered here.)
Actually, I agree: Buffy would not have ordered Lorne to kill Lindsey, nor anyone else, nor would she have done it herself. (In these particular circumstances; if Lindsey had led an attack to kill her friends a la Knights of Byzantium, she would have killed him.) Which might, or might not, have led to Lindsey doing future damage as the guy filling the power vacuum left by the Black Thorn. Or he could have done something else altogether. Prophecies and predetermined futures are tricky things in the Jossverse, and Lorne is anything but infallible in his readings. My point being: Buffy would not have condemned Lindsey to die for what he might or might not do in the future, which, yes, is on a level with her decision of letting Ben live. (And she never finds out he doesn’t. Although she would have if the first version of the script for Lies My Parents Told Me would have been shot; in that version, even season 7 hardened Buffy still disagrees with Giles on this matter, to put it mildly.) And I don’t think this is the “easy” decision, with the one Angel made being the more difficult one.
Putting “the end justifies the means” as your sole motto ultimately doesn’t make you morally ambiguous, it makes you and the people you fight undistinguishable from each other. Which is one of the reasons why I think Charles Xavier in the X-Men movieverse (can’t speak for the comics of which I still have read too little) takes the harder, not the easier road than Erik Lensherr, aka Magneto does. Dismissing Xavier as a rosy-eyed idealist ignores that the man does have to live with not, say, brainwashing the Strykers and Senator Kellys, or killing whatever human or mutant poses a threat with a thought. With his powers, he could essentially be the X-Men version of the AtS character Jasmine. The fact he refuses this option which must be a constant temptation leads to situations like getting kidnapped, or to the attack on the school, so it’s that like the narrative postulates keeping the high road automatically grants you immunity from the more unpleasant consequences.
Or take good old Duncan McLeod, hero of the series Highlander, often chided (most often by people who only have seen the Methos episodes) for moral inflexibility. In fact, I can think only of one situation where the narrative trick pandarus critisizes is used (i.e. let the morally ambiguous guy to the killing so the hero doesn’t have to) – the episode Chivalry. Otherwise, you get scenarios in which Duncan kills bad guys because they threaten someone else. You get situations where Duncan does not kill bad guys (Kenny comes to mind) for a variety of reasons, and it does get back to bite him a season or so later. You get situations in which he tries his best to find another way, fails and is devastated because he likes and admires the person in question but has to kill to save lives (Ingrid in Valkyrie being a case in point). You get situations where he doesn’t kill, and lo and behold, it turns out to have been the right decision. (Kirin/Kage in Blind Faith, who used to be as evil a K’Immie as they come. The question “can a mass murderer change?” is asked here two seasons before the Horsemen episodes, and might I point out it’s Joe, not Duncan, who says he can’t? Duncan has a hard time believing it himself, but ultimately risks the belief and turns out to be justified.) As heroic narratives go, HL is pretty much lives of presenting its hero with the moral dilemmas, not of sparing him those.
I treasure ambiguity. I tend to go for villains and ambiguous characters in my fanfic – Darla, Londo, Connor, Quark and Garak all being cases in point. At the same time, I am glad that there are heros around who are ready to choose not to let the end justify the means. That, say, DS9 gives us Bashir arguing till the end that no, this is not acceptable, not even in a desperate war, just as the same show gives us Sisko who makes the opposite decision. And honestly, if I were living in one of these fictional universes, I’d stick with Buffy, Charles, Duncan and Bashir over Angel, Magneto, Methos and Sisko. The former might also get me killed, but at least I’d know that they wouldn’t do so by sacrificing me for whatever end they have in mind without even asking.
pandarus wrote an excellent post pondering the superhero narrative and its implications. In case anyone hasn’t read it yet, do so, it’s here. I mostly agree with her arguments. However, a minor sideissue made me ponder some contrary thoughts, or rather, an addendum from another perspective. She wrote, in a comment: It's in the same category, imho, as Clark refusing to kill and then profiting because Lex does it for him, or Buffy refusing to kill Ben and then profiting because Giles does it for her. This happens an awful lot in Western popular fiction, and I think it's dishonest. It's the whole have-your-cake-and-eat-it thing.
I disagreed on Buffy’s account, my main argument being that Buffy, as opposed to Clark, does not in fact profit from Giles’ deed. She would if the narrative were constructed in the usual way – i.e. if Giles, by killing Ben, were saving her life, or Dawn’s life. (To take a Jossverse situation which actually does use this particular narrative structure – take Lilah killing Billy at the end of Billy. Which saves Cordelia, both in the sense of sparing her the necessity of doing it and saving her from the immediate threat of Billy; Cordelia, of course, is at this point, alas, in her St. Cordy phase (though her earlier argument with Lilah is one of the last flickerings of Queen C.). As it is, Giles undoubtedly does save a lot of people from getting their brains scrambled, at the very least. But this is not why he kills Ben. The argument he gives just before doing it is that “Glory would make Buffy pay for this mercy”. I.e. he does it to save Buffy’s life. Which he doesn’t accomplish. As a matter of fact, Giles killing Ben does not help anyone within the narrative of the show. Buffy dies and would have died regardless of whether or not Ben (and Glory) had continued to live. Her traumatic resurrection against her will, the long depression, the awful job, the inability to reconnect with her friends for a long time, the self-destructive affair with Spike – all this would have happened in a world with Ben and Glory in it just as surely as it did with them dead.
Now you can argue that Buffy’s decision to accept Ben’s surrender and let him live was irresponsible (in regards to the aforementioned future brain suck victims outside of Sunnydale), just as you can argue whether the fact she did not pursue Dru in Crush and never bothered to dust Harmony was irresponsible towards future victims. The narrative of BTVS never presents her as perfect. But it did let her choose a certain code. In reviews of Not Fade Away, I’ve repeatedly come across the comment that Buffy would not have made the decision to kill Lindsey; this usually was not meant as a compliment but as a proof of Angel, who did make this decision, being the superior and more “honest” character for it. (Often, the Giles-killing-Ben incident was mentioned in those same reviews as an example of Buffy not having the guts of getting her hands dirty.) (Presumably, the fact that if Buffy does make the conscious decision to kill someone outside of the usual vampire staking routine, whether it's Faith in Graduation or Anya in Selfless, she does not want anyone else involved and goes after the parties in question alone never is considered here.)
Actually, I agree: Buffy would not have ordered Lorne to kill Lindsey, nor anyone else, nor would she have done it herself. (In these particular circumstances; if Lindsey had led an attack to kill her friends a la Knights of Byzantium, she would have killed him.) Which might, or might not, have led to Lindsey doing future damage as the guy filling the power vacuum left by the Black Thorn. Or he could have done something else altogether. Prophecies and predetermined futures are tricky things in the Jossverse, and Lorne is anything but infallible in his readings. My point being: Buffy would not have condemned Lindsey to die for what he might or might not do in the future, which, yes, is on a level with her decision of letting Ben live. (And she never finds out he doesn’t. Although she would have if the first version of the script for Lies My Parents Told Me would have been shot; in that version, even season 7 hardened Buffy still disagrees with Giles on this matter, to put it mildly.) And I don’t think this is the “easy” decision, with the one Angel made being the more difficult one.
Putting “the end justifies the means” as your sole motto ultimately doesn’t make you morally ambiguous, it makes you and the people you fight undistinguishable from each other. Which is one of the reasons why I think Charles Xavier in the X-Men movieverse (can’t speak for the comics of which I still have read too little) takes the harder, not the easier road than Erik Lensherr, aka Magneto does. Dismissing Xavier as a rosy-eyed idealist ignores that the man does have to live with not, say, brainwashing the Strykers and Senator Kellys, or killing whatever human or mutant poses a threat with a thought. With his powers, he could essentially be the X-Men version of the AtS character Jasmine. The fact he refuses this option which must be a constant temptation leads to situations like getting kidnapped, or to the attack on the school, so it’s that like the narrative postulates keeping the high road automatically grants you immunity from the more unpleasant consequences.
Or take good old Duncan McLeod, hero of the series Highlander, often chided (most often by people who only have seen the Methos episodes) for moral inflexibility. In fact, I can think only of one situation where the narrative trick pandarus critisizes is used (i.e. let the morally ambiguous guy to the killing so the hero doesn’t have to) – the episode Chivalry. Otherwise, you get scenarios in which Duncan kills bad guys because they threaten someone else. You get situations where Duncan does not kill bad guys (Kenny comes to mind) for a variety of reasons, and it does get back to bite him a season or so later. You get situations in which he tries his best to find another way, fails and is devastated because he likes and admires the person in question but has to kill to save lives (Ingrid in Valkyrie being a case in point). You get situations where he doesn’t kill, and lo and behold, it turns out to have been the right decision. (Kirin/Kage in Blind Faith, who used to be as evil a K’Immie as they come. The question “can a mass murderer change?” is asked here two seasons before the Horsemen episodes, and might I point out it’s Joe, not Duncan, who says he can’t? Duncan has a hard time believing it himself, but ultimately risks the belief and turns out to be justified.) As heroic narratives go, HL is pretty much lives of presenting its hero with the moral dilemmas, not of sparing him those.
I treasure ambiguity. I tend to go for villains and ambiguous characters in my fanfic – Darla, Londo, Connor, Quark and Garak all being cases in point. At the same time, I am glad that there are heros around who are ready to choose not to let the end justify the means. That, say, DS9 gives us Bashir arguing till the end that no, this is not acceptable, not even in a desperate war, just as the same show gives us Sisko who makes the opposite decision. And honestly, if I were living in one of these fictional universes, I’d stick with Buffy, Charles, Duncan and Bashir over Angel, Magneto, Methos and Sisko. The former might also get me killed, but at least I’d know that they wouldn’t do so by sacrificing me for whatever end they have in mind without even asking.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:30 am (UTC)Glad you liked it
Date: 2004-08-06 02:51 am (UTC)Re: Glad you liked it
Date: 2004-08-06 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 03:14 am (UTC)Robin Morgan's chapter on heroes in her essay The Demon Lover is very informative, especially with regard to Campbellian analysis of myth.
(Heroes are killers, in most myths.)
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 03:54 am (UTC)Of course, the dynamic can be seen in some SF/F shows - Bashir/Garak (and to an extent Sisko/Garak), Angel/Wes in post-Sleep Tight eps. The scene you mention in Billy is the only reason why it isn't officially my favourite ep ever.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 08:34 am (UTC)Is the original version of "Lies" online? What I remember from that episode is Buffy more or less agreeing that she would have allowed Dawn to die to save the world. That was what led me to think that Buffy & Angel had essentially arrived at the same place at the end of their arcs.
Good point about the psycho sidekick cliche,
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 11:53 am (UTC)Well, she agrees with him, but I don't think that she meant it. She tried to send Dawn away from the fighting in Chosen.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:28 pm (UTC)Billy: really? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a good episode and well-acted, but why would it be your favourite if not for the Lilah scene? (I'd be hardpressed to name my overall favourite, but I could name several from each season I like better than Billy.)
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 05:11 am (UTC)So even though I thought, "What?" I didn't reply, because this is fan thought of Future Smallville, once tights and arch-villainhood enters the scene. If Smallville!Clark were Superman, originating from the show's backstory. That's just not applicable to any current or past era of Comics!Clark, and maybe few SV fans would care how the two diverged since Smallville is their main 'Superman' exposure.
In the comics, Superman generally can be counted to cooperate with authority. (On matters that do not deal with sovereignty of nations, election results, usurpation of power from one government to award to a more-favored government.) Sometimes there are stories where Superman snaps, usually removing weapons from combatants, but the consequences tend to push him right back into his stance of non-interference with human destiny.
It would seem natural to assume that a god-like alien is busy bossing humans around, making them cleave to the behavior he wants from them, but this isn't something found very often at all in the comics. Most of the time it's just, "Save lives, set a good example, let people make up their own minds - and keep a distance."
Vigilante? Probably fits the bill in some ways, but since the character cooperates with authority in ways that wouldn't violate personal moral stance, authority in the DCU on the surface doesn't treat the character as such. (It's been shown that some interests have thought of contigency plans if Superman were to go insane or become controlled by hostiles.)
I'm trying to think of comics situations where Lex killed and this benefitted Superman. The closest I can think of is the latest Zod, but at the time of Zod's death, Zod had already been defeated in battle by Superman. (Lex gambled and arranged for Zod to be depowered during the fight, hoping to use Superman as his own vengeful weapon. But Zod had already been beaten before the depowering and committed suicide rather than be defeated *and* depowered. Lex won either way.)
In BtVS, I'll admit to some confusion as to why a/the Slayer could kill vampires, demons and monsters, but that the line was drawn at the truly human monster. (See: Faith's major faux pas that got her a murder rap.) Maybe it's similar to a wolf guarding sheep? Wolf can eat all the omelettes the wolf wants, but never a leg of lamb. Even if said lamb just massacred half the flock? ::confused::
In HL, I thought briefly about Immortals persisting through all the force and course of history - this could lead to a different perspective on an individual's possibilities for change, especially an Immortal living in a changing world.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 06:12 am (UTC)My usual interpretation is that it's a meta thing. The vampires and demons in BtVS are metaphors for real conflicts that you need to destroy or transcend, and the prohibition on killing people is there so that viewers can't interpret that as a blueprint for how to deal with real world criminal offenders.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 12:18 pm (UTC)Buffy is meant to deal with the things that ordinary humans can't- the monsters that roam her world. There are human institutions to deal with humans. I believe she even explained it that way in one of the episodes.
Keep in mind that in normal slayer training, slayers are not taught that there are 'good' demons and 'bad' demons. The early years of Buffy were much more black and white than Angel ever was - all demons were bad, with Angel being the lone exception and he alone had a soul. Most slayers are young, and it must be easier for the Watchers to keep that black and white view of the world - and allowing their charges to go after human monsters - it adds all kinds of grey to the equation.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:34 pm (UTC)This being said: my interpretation as to why Slayers can kill demons but not humans always was that you have the law to deal with humans. For example, Warren could have been tried, convicted and jailed for the death of Katrina. It wasn't supernatural, they were both human. He could even have gone to jail for wounding Buffy with intent to kill (since he did it with a gun), even if the death of Tara on that occasion was accidental on his part. But no such option exists for the various supernatural foes Buffy (and later the other Slayers) fight.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 06:28 am (UTC)I think you're right, but, to play devil's advocate, I can see the pattern
Charles and Scott would never kill him in cold blood, but Logan leaves him chained to the dam, and you don't get the sense that anyone asked him a lot of questions about it later. I don't think that makes Charles responsible for Logan's actions, or for Magneto's, but, yes, he does benefit from them. (Assuming Stryker's actually dead, and not just comic-book dead.)
Now, I think most of the time Charles's ethics are a very good thing (especially since, as you point out, he's got enough power to be really, really scary if he decided the ends always justify the means). But not sure how I'd rewrite the end of X2 without using the narrative device
That's the part where Charles' use of questionable ethics comes in.
Date: 2004-08-06 06:36 am (UTC)If Charles in movieverse is willing to stop an entire museum full of people frozen just to chastise his students for abusing their powers in public, I don't think movieverse Charles would be too too concerned about the sanctity of the human mind to prevent him from simply erasing Stryker's memories. He would not enjoy it, but he has acted in such a way for less reason than Stryker gave him.
Comicverse Charles is sometimes that ruthless and sometimes not.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:47 pm (UTC)Of course, the best tactic would be to shag as many non-mutants as you can, and within a couple of decades *everybody* would have a mutant in the family tree. I wonder just how many people have the unexpressed trait already?
no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 07:35 am (UTC)I linked this at the top of my rant which doesn't really have anything to do with your post, but sprung from a different part of the same post as yours did. So's you know. It's here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/thran/60787.html).
Thanks!
Date: 2004-08-06 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 02:43 pm (UTC)Ben: remember, Buffy had no idea Ben had sold out Dawn to Glory. As far as she knew, he was the guy who had the incredibly bad luck of being stuck with Glory the way Oz was with his inner werewolf, plus he had just risked his life to save Giles' life. So no killing him, though she probably would have if Ben, as his human self, had continued to fight her.
(Moreover, the clock was ticking and she was in a hurry to save Dawn.)