BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: Vampire Hip Part 2 – Angel
September 27th 2009 09:42
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David Boreanaz as Angel: “What a poster child for soulfullness you are” (Darla in Angel 2.5, “Dear Boy”)
According to Alicia Porter, a member of the subculture, “The stereotypical Goth never smiles and always broods.” Surrounded by an aura of impending gloom, sadness and mystery, Angel appropriately wears timeless sleek black, simple and sexy, with a hint of European old-world feel. He is the quintessential tortured (super)hero on a moral mission of redemption and is represented as character with depth, prone to existential musings and associated with intellect and beauty. His reading includes Sartre’s Nausea in French and most of his time is spent on an internal struggle with his demon nature and the pursuit of good and humanity. He has access to ancient secret knowledge and experiences that fascinate the teenage Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who tells him: “When you kiss me I wanna die” (2.5, “Reptile boy”), verbalizing the transgressive sexual desire provoked by the vampire, linked to the death wish. Buffy’s vampires transcend the debt owed to the imaginary world of Anne Rice and her Vampire Chronicles, as they are sexual beings in all the traditional ways as well.
Angel spent a lot of his time on Buffy quite...shirtless. Kinky much?
Angel is portrayed as the “doom and gloom” type of goth, who tends to be focused on morbid, depressing or apocalyptic themes. In order to mock his pervasive attitude Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) does an impression of him by sitting in his chair, getting a book and brooding: “Oh no, I can’t do anything fun tonight, I have to count my past sins, then alphabetize them. Oh, by the way, I’m thinking of snapping on Friday” (Angel 2.6). This constructed image of Angel is explored in-depth and reflexively toyed with in Buffy’s spin off series, Angel. In “Guise will be Guise” (2.6) the swami to whom Angel reaches out for advice analyzes the hero’s immaculate image through his car, a slick black “chick magnet” convertible with a personalized license plate that says “Irony”. He concludes that appearances are important to the self-loathing Angel, who finally admits: “Well, maybe my persona is a little affected”. His pretentious and narcissistic wooden-faced manner and lack of an apparent sense of humour are openly mocked, as is his sense of dress. Angel’s lame explanations that “he dresses all in black, so he doesn’t have to worry about matching”, which helps because he doesn’t have a reflection, are dismissed as a pose.
The series updates the iconic black cape of the vampire to a long black detective coat: “Love the coat, it’s all about the coat” explains the mind-reading demon Lorne (Andy Hallett). Even the down-to-earth Doyle (Glenn Quinn) admits he is strangely attracted to the way that coat tends to float behind Angel (A1.4). This concept is interpreted literally in “Judgement” (A2.1) through humorous visual discrepancy, which results from the inversion of established character roles: when Wesley (Alexis Denisof) puts Angel’s coat on in an emergency, while pretending to be him, he adopts his whole image. Bafflingly, he gains all the superhero powers and attributes, including an aura of mystery, the ability to scare off enemies by sheer force of gaze and reputation, his fighting skills improve like magic and he even manages to romance a damsel in distress. When Wesley utters the archetypal hero line: “Release her or die”, the surprised Angel weakly tries to claim his identity back: “Don’t I say that? Wesley, can I please have my coat back?” The tongue-in-cheek fun culminates in Angel being called an eunuch by the episode’s villain.
Angelus, Angel's evil yet charismatic alter ego
Both series explore Angel’s history both as a human being and a vampire. His soulless vampire version, Angelus, is presented as darker, more charismatic, frightening and transgressive than his mellower incarnation. Angel confides in Buffy: For a hundred years I offered an ugly death to everyone I met and I did it with a song in my heart…no conscience, no remorse, it’s an easy way to live. You’ve no idea what it’s like to have done the things I’ve done and to care. I can walk like a man, but I am not one” (1.7, “Angel”). Angelus does not care, has more fun and arouses even more interest and excitement as a character: according to Giles, “since Angel lost his soul, he’s regained his sense of whimsy” (2.17, “Passion”). Angelus’ tone is mocking and he laughs a lot in a drastic change from the stone-faced, tormented Angel. A ruthless, self-centered narcissist, he displays no trace of humanity, leading a degenerate existence in pursuit of ever more refined dark pleasures, which is reflected by a more flashy and exuberant fashion sense. His style is effortless and much less of a conscious preoccupation: he simply puts on the black leather pants with their fetish/bondage connotations, which Angel seems to save for special occasions.
Liam the Irish rogue soon to become Angelus
We are informed that before becoming Angelus, “The Scourge of Europe”, young Liam, a tall and dark Irish rogue born in the early 1700s, was a worthless being, a “drunken, whoring layabout” and a disappointment to his parents (A3.32, “Amends”). Darla (Julie Benz) sired him, choosing an attractive scoundrel as her mate for his beauty and intellectual inferiority. Like Lord Ruthven, the hero of Dr. John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1819), based on Lord George Byron, Angelus evolves as a vampire, taking a subtly perverse pleasure in tormenting those close to him. He is the Fatal Man, an archetypal anti-hero from the Gothic romance school of literature.
Angelus exhibits disdain for authority as exemplified in his early confrontation in 1760 London with the Master (Hans Teuscher), the oldest ruling vampire of Buffyverse and the sire of Darla. Mystical religious missions bore Angelus. He considers himself aesthetically superior to the Master, a red eyed Nosferatu with a penchant for mannered theatricality, and convinces Darla to leave with him with the following argument: “Tell the truth, whose face do you want to look at for all eternity, his or mine?” (A2.5). Angelus is a hedonist and leads a reckless high life among humans with Darla, leaving a bloody trace of bodies wherever they go. As Cordelia sums it up: “Imagine Bonnie and Clyde if they had 150 years to get it right” (A2.5). Becoming a part of the vampire elite infuses his style of assured confidence, exemplifying a typically subcultural attitude rooted in the conviction of his superiority over the rest of the human race.
Julie Benz as the seductive and cruel Darla
Darla is set on survival and remains loyal primarily to herself, although frivolous fun and pleasure are a priority as well, foremost the exhilarating chase, the central part of her transgressive lifestyle with Angelus, whom she treats as her “stallion”, an alpha male toy. She is a professional seductress, and embodies experience in an innocent looking body, making an incongruous whole: to Buffy “that hair on top of that outfit” is “the saddest thing in the world” (1.7). Manipulative and perfidious, she evokes a high-class courtesan, whose purpose is to play the game and win. As Angelus’ sire, she has power over him both as a mother and a lover, subverting the conventional notion of family relations. Their vampire sex is shown to be controversially transgressive: it is performed with vampfaces on, and includes biting and sucking each other’s blood (A2.4, “Untouched”). As a subcultural practice, goth has been defined in terms of sexual subversions and in opposition to taboos relating to ‘perverse’ sexual practices, such as sadomasochism, fetishism and bondage, which are implicitly present in all vampire relationships in Buffyverse.
In Angel Darla is revealed to be a feminist as well: “Can’t a woman wreak a little havoc without there being a man involved?” (A2.11, “Redefinition”). It is Darla who discovers Drusilla (Juliet Landau) and points her out to Angelus, who lacks the sophistication and brains that Darla possesses (2.5). They have to find new ways to amuse themselves throughout eternity and Drusilla becomes their next pet project. Angelus takes delight in corrupting innocent young women by first tormenting them to insanity. He turns Drusilla into a vampire when she’s about to take her vows in a convent: “Convents – they’re just big cookie jars” (A2.5, “Dear Boy”) and thus irresistible to Angelus. The “sweet, pure, chaste” Drusilla becomes his obsession (2.7, “Lie to Me”). She is an exceptionally alluring victim because of her fragility, innocence and unique psychic abilities, which add another dimension to her terror at the fate that awaits her and her family. She is turned into a vampire to make her torment last throughout eternity and she subsequently takes revenge for it on Angel, who unlike Angelus is able to suffer in remorse, by chaining him to a bed and burning his exposed torso with holy water (2.9, “What’s my line p.1”), one of many implicitly kinky rituals depicted on the show.
Spike (James Marsters) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau) complete Angelus' vampire family
Spike (James Marsters) is in turn sired by Drusilla, who was lonely and simply followed Darla’s suggestion for making herself a mate: “You could just take the first drooling idiot that comes along” (A2.7, “Darla”). Angelus is the typical alpha male leader of this newly created vampire family. After regaining his demon self when Angel loses his soul, he immediately returns to the clan to challenge Spike’s status and easily reclaims his primary position and Drusilla’s affections (2.16). The Gothic romance interrelationships in their vampire family contain Byronic allusions of illicit passions, incest, tormenting loved ones, struggle for domination and power between strong individuals of extreme physical beauty and desirability: appearances are important to vampires, as they need to be known and recognized, especially by their victims.
The Fanged Four wreaking havoc
After regaining his soul Angel wandered for a century seeking Darla and a way to return to his vampire family. He desperately wanted to recover his status and belong to the group again, but could not prove himself as a vampire and became an outcast in both the human and the vampire worlds. He never lost his style though: when the demon Whistler (Max Perlich) offered to help in adjusting to “the soul situation”, Angel’s response was: “I want to learn from you, but I don’t wanna dress like you” (2.21, “Becoming Part 1”).
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: Vampire Hip Part 3 – Spike
Article by Patricia Bieszk
© Copyright P. Bieszk 2009
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