Why Buffy Makes Sense
May 28th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike is a vampire who — like Angel — hooks up with Buffy and the Scoobies (in different ways). Unlike Angel, however, Spike has no soul and is, therefore, evil. (An interesting theory of evil.)
And yet Spike ends up being attractive to Buffy, turning into a not-half-bad (or maybe merely-half-bad) guy. This only happens after a chip is implanted in his head that causes him immense pain whenever he tries to hurt a human, however.
After the justification for Angel (a vampire) and Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) being a couple was that Angel had a soul, the Buffy-Spike connection doesn’t make sense.
Unless you know Aristotle.
Aristotle said the only way to cure a vicious person was to associate pain with his vicious acts.
Aristotle thought that to be virtuous was to have your mind and emotions aligned, with your mind in charge. To be vicious was to have your mind and emotions aligned, with your emotions in charge.
Most of us are between these two states, he said: our mind and emotions often conflict.
Without emotional motivation to change, the vicious person won’t. So punishment — pain — has to be introduced so as to create conflict between mind and emotions. That way the vicious person is forced into a state between viciousness and virtue.
So, after Spike has had a while with pain and eating humans linked, he ends up no longer purely vicious. And that helps make sense out of his attractiveness to Buffy. Evidently you don’t necessarily need a soul to be a not-purely-bad vampire. You just need a chip in your brain to cure your viciousness.
But The Wife and I haven’t made it to the end of the series yet, so I don’t know how things turn out.
And don’t ruin it for me.
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UPDATE Welcome readers of The Corner! Thanks to Mr. Goldberg for the link (or rather, for not cutting the link out of my e-mail. *grin*).
My article today over at your friendly libertarian site, The Free Liberal:
“Chief Justice George Was Right (Though Horribly Wrong)“
Other philosophical entertainment posts/articles:
Songs You Can’t Play on the Radio Anymore
M. Night Shyamalan and the Search for Purpose
